PROv..-.. i)IN(;j OF Til 1^ 
HK'/l (\' NFKir:vcK F( ; 

Ej"^' :a.].j\ in 'I Hi^:sc)U . j. 




prese:m-eu by 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
FIFTH CONFERENCE FOR 
EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH 



Held at Athens, Georgia 
April 24, 26 and 26, 1902 



PUBLISHED BY THE SOUTHERN EDUCATION BOARD 
1902 




[jl^^ 



d „ 



GAUT-OGDBN COMPANY 
PRINTERS AND BINDERS 
KNOXVILLK,TKNNKSSKB 



Gift 
Publisher 
tIAp'05 



EDITOR'S NOTE 

In presenting to the public this volume of Proceedings of the 
Fifth Conference for Education in the South, a word of explana- 
tion seems necessary. The limits of space imposed upon us 
necessitated a process of elimination, as the whole mass of ma- 
terial furnished by the stenographer's report of the meeting at 
Athens would have made a volume altogether too cumbersome. 
In making our selections for publication, then, we were guided 
by the principles expressed in the following questions, which were 
rigorously applied to every address and even to every paragraph : 
Does it contribute to the understanding of this educational move- 
ment? Does it present a new phase of the Southern educational 
problem ? Does it communicate anything of the inspiring, profit- 
able, helpful and hopeful spirit that animated the Conference? 
The result has been that we have grouped together the papers 
that give somewhat of a complete history of the movement, its 
past, its present activities and far-reaching plans for the future. 
These we have followed with whole addresses that seemed to us 
of permanent interest and wide application, and finally, under a 
general heading, "Significant Utterances of the Conference," we 
have brought together expressions from men of force and leading 
from every part of the country, all bearing upon this great, new 
movement for education in the South. 

Some of the illustrations refer to the schools visited by the 
party from the East, who formed so large a part of the meeting; 
others directly supplement the text. 

It is hoped that the report may stimulate and increase interest 
in the great work which the Conference is intended to foster. 

Bureau of thb; Southern Education Board. 
Knoxville, Tennessee, 

August, 1^02. 



(V) 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PROCEEDINGS i 

HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT : 

Annuai. Address of the President. By Robert C. Ogden . . lO 

The Work in North Carolina. Report of Charles D. Mclver . 20 
The Work in Louisiana and Mississippi. Report of Edwin A. 

Alderman 2y 

The Work in Virginia. Reports made by H. B. Frissell . . 34 

And by Robert Fraser 35 

The Work of the Bureau of the Southern Education Board. 

Charles W. Dabney ' • 38 

And by P. P. Claxton 40 

ADDRESSES : 

Popular Education as the Primary Policy of the South. By 

Hoke Smith 43 

Education and the Voluntary Tax. By Governor C. B. Aycock 52 

The Child and the State. By Edwin A. Alderman .... 55 

Co-OpEration in Educational Effort. By Hamilton W. Mabie 6z 

Education Through Handicraft. By Carleton B. Gibson . . 68 

The Child of the Operative. By Lazvton B. Evans .... 72 

Democracy, the American Ideal. By Felix Adler . ... 76 

A Word to and for the Teachers. By James E. Russell . . 80 
The Larger Meaning of the Conference. By John Graham 

Brooks 83 

(vi) 



SIGNIFICANT UTTERANCES OF THE CONFERENCE: 

The Import of the Conference to the Nation. By W. T. Harris 85 

Education in Universae Brotherhood. By Hugh H. Hanna . 86 

The Outlook in Texas. By President Houston 86 

The Education that Liberates. By J. B. Aswell .... 87 
The Common School System oe the South. By J. W. Aber- 

crombie 89 

The South's Three Classes. By John Massey . . . . .90 

Mississippi's Increasing Colored Population. By R. B. Fulton 90 

Industrial Education, the Hope oe the South. By C. C. Thach 91 

An Educational Quarantine. By Henry St. George Tucker . 93 
The Denominational College and Popular Education. By H. 

N. Snyder 94 

Education, the Supreme Need oe the Hour. By John H. Small 95 

An Educational Trust. By Clark Howell 96 

Some Lessons Learned at the Conference. By W. H. Farnham 97 

Education Means Everything. By Albert Shaw .... 98 

The Men oe the Mountains. By Emory Speer 100 

Impressions oe the Conference. By Edward T. Sanford . .101 



(vii) 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



Chaplx of the Univeksity of Georgia, where the Sessions were held. 

Frontispiece 

Campus of the University of Georgia i 

State Normal School, Athens, Ga 20 

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Va 32 

Science Hall, University of Tennessee 3^ 

Carnegie Library, Tuskegee 4^ 

Virginia Polytechnic Institute S** 

Washington and Lee University, Va 62 

Primary Industrial School, Columbus, Ga. — (Basketry) ... 68 

Primary Industrial School, Columbus, Ga. — (Manual Training and 

Cooking) 69 

Primary Industrial School, Columbus, Ga. — (School Gardening) . 72 

The School that Won the Fight 74 

A Factory School and a Mountain School 7^ 

Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Corps of Cadets So- 
Rear View of the University of Tennessee, from Across the Ten- 
nessee River 84 



(viii) 



Conference for Education 
in the South 

ATHENS MEETING, 1902 



PROCEEDINGS 



FIRST DAY 

AFTERNOON SESSION.— Thursday, April 24, 3:00 

The Fifth Annual Conference for Education in the South 
was called to order in the chapel of the University of Georgia, 
Athens, on Thursday, April 24, at 5 p. m., the President, Robert 
C. Ogden, of New York, in the chair. "Blest be the tie that binds"" 
was sung, and prayer was offered by the Rev. Neal L. Anderson,, 
of Montgomery, Alabama. 

On motion a Committee on Organization was appointed by 
the chair, as follows : Eugene C. Branson, Athens, Ga. ; George 
T. Winston, Raleigh, N. C. ; Charles F. Meserve, Raleigh, N. C. ; 
William H. Baldwin, Jr., New York ; Walter H. Page, New York, 
and George S. Dickerman, New Haven, Conn. 

The Rev. A. B. Hunter, of Raleigh, North Carolina, secre- 
tary and treasurer of the Fourth Conference, presented his report,, 
showing receipts, $72; expenditures, $86,29, and balance due ac- 
countant, $14.29. The chair appointed Dr. William Jay Schieffe- 
lin, of New York City, to audit the treasurer's report. 

President Ogden outlined the objects of the Conference. 

While waiting for the report of the Committee on Organiza- 
tion, Dr. Charles W. Dabney, at the request of the chair, explained 
some charts that were posted on the walls of the assembly room. 



showing the comparative illiteracy in the several Southern states. 
These charts were part of an exhibit from the Southern Educa- 
tion Board's Bureau, at Knoxville, Tennessee, of which Dr. Dab- 
ney is director. 

The Rev. Neal L. Anderson presented an invitation for mem- 
bers of the Conference to visit the city of Montgomery on the 
following Monday at lo a. m. 

The report of the Committee on Organization, presented 
through its chairman, E. C. Branson, of Athens, Georgia, was as 
follows : 

1. That the program as printed be the program of the Conference. 

2. That addresses be Hmited to twenty minutes, except when the 
speaker had been invited to occupy thirty minutes, and other speeches be 
limited to five minutes. 

3. That a Committee on Resolutions consisting of nine persons be 
appointed by the chair. 

4. That the Committee have leave to nominate officers. 

The report was adopted. 

EVENING SESSION.— Thursday, April 24, 8:00 

The address of welcome was made by the Hon. Clark Howell, 
editor of the Atlanta Constitution. 

The annual address of the president was delivered by Mr. 
Robert C. Ogden, of New York City. 

A response was given by Professor C. C. Thach, of the Ala- 
bama Polytechnic Institute at Auburn. 

An invitation was presented from the Athens Young Men's 
Christian Association offering the members of the Conference the 
use of their rooms. 

SECOND DAY 

MORNING SESSION.— Friday, April 25, 10:00 

The session was opened at the University chapel with the 
singing of "My country, 'tis of thee," and prayer was offered by 
the Rev. Percy S. Grant, of New York City. 

The chair appointed the following Committee on Resolu- 



tions : Albert Shaw, New York ; C. C. Thach, Alabama ; William 
A. Blair, North Carolina ; Walter B. Hill, Georgia ; J. W. Aber- 
crombie, Alabama ; J. Y. Joyner, North Carolina ; Robert B, Ful- 
ton, Mississippi ; Walter H. Page, New York ; William H. Bald- 
win, Jr., New York. 

The chair announced the report of the Committee on Organi- 
zation for the nomination of officers as the next order of business. 
The chairman of the Committee, President E. C. Branson, then 
presented the following names of the nominees, who were unani- 
mously elected : 

President: Robert C. Ogden, New York. 

Secretary: Rev. A, B. Hunter, Raleigh, N. C. 

Treasurer: George Foster Peabody, New York. 

Vice-Presidents: J. Y. Joyner, North Carolina; Walter H. 
Page, New York; Eugene C. Branson, Georgia. 

Executive Committee: H. B. Frissell, Virginia; E. T. San- 
ford, Tennessee; Charles F. Meserve, North Carolina; Hoke 
Smith, Georgia ; William A. Blair, North Carolina. 

Reports were presented by District Directors of the Southern 
Education Board as follows : Dr. Charles D. Mclver, for North 
Carolina; Dr. H. B. Frissell, for Virginia; Dr. Edwin A. Alder- 
man, for Louisiana and Mississippi. 

An address on "Education and the Voluntary Tax" was de- 
livered by the Hon. C. B. Aycock, Governor of North Carolina. 

Addresses were also delivered by Dr. John Massey, of Tus- 
kegee, Alabama, and the Hon. Robert B. Fulton, Chancellor of 
the University of Mississippi. 

The ladies of Athens provided lunch for the Conference in 
Demr.ark Hall, one of the buildings of the University. 

AFTERNOON SESSION.— Friday, April 25, 2:00 

The session opened with a registration of the members of 
the Conference. 

An address on "Popular Education as the Primary Policy of 
the South" was delivered by the Hon. Hoke Smith, of Atlanta, 
Georgia. 

"The Press in Relation to Popular Education" was the sub- 



ject of an address by Professor Henry St. George Tucker, of Vir- 
ginia. 

An invitation to the Conference to hold its next meeting in 
Richmond, Virginia, was given by Professor Henry St. George 
Tucker and Dr. Paul Barringer, chairman of the faculty of the 
University of Virginia. 

The work of the Bureau of Investigation, Information and 
Publication of the Southern Education Board was outlined by 
Professor P. P. Claxton, of Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Addresses were also delivered by Mr. William H. Baldwin^ 
Jr., of New York, and the Hon. Hugh H. Hanna, of Indianapolis. 

nVBNING SESSION.— Friday, April 25, 8:00 

An address on "Education through Handicraft" was deliv- 
ered by Carleton B. Gibson, Superintendent of Schools, Colum- 
bus, Georgia. 

An address, "The Child of the Operative," was given by 
Lawton B. Evans, Superintendent of Schools, Augusta, Georgia. 

Announcement was made of a gift of $40,000 from a mem- 
ber of the Conference to the University of Georgia for a Library 
Building, upon condition that the State Legislature make pro- 
vision for its support. 

An address on "The Child and the State" was delivered by 
Edwin A. Alderman, President of Tulane University, New Or- 
leans, Louisiana. 

An address, "Co-operation in Educational Effort," was given 
by Hamilton W. Mabie, editor of the Outlook, New York City. 

THIRD DAY 

MORNING SESSION.— Saturday, April 26, 10:00 

The session met at the State Normal School and was opened 
with the singing of "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." 
Prayer was offered by the Hon. W. J. Northen, former Governor 
of Georgia. 

Invitations for the next meeting of the Conference were pre- 
sented as follows : Nashville, Tennessee, by Professor Vance, of 



the Peabody Normal; Knoxville, Tennessee, by Dr. Charles W. 
Dabney, President of the University of Tennessee; Spartanburg, 
South Carolina, by Professor H. N. Snyder, of Wofford College, 
S. C, and John J. McMahan, State Superintendent of Education 
for South Carolina ; Deland, Florida, by the Hon. W. N. Sheats, 
Superintendent of Public Instruction in Florida; Greensboro, 
North Carolina, by Dr. Charles D. Mclver, of the North Caro- 
lina State Normal and Industrial College, Greensboro, N. C. 
These several invitations the chair referred to the Executive 
Committee for future consideration. 

Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr., of New York, President of the 
General Education Board, then made the following announce- 
ment: 

Ladies of Georgia : I am going to speak to the women of Georgia 
just a moment, because we are here at the State Normal School in which 
all the women of the State of Georgia are vitally interested. 

In behalf of the General Education Board, then, I wish to say that 
the Board has a very deep interest in the great work that women do for 
education, in the great possibilities, the great potential power that women 
have to induce those who represent them to see that the cause of education 
is protected and furthered. 

We have been particularly interested in the great work which Mr. 
Branson is doing here in this State Normal School. We believe in the 
work which is represented by his personality, by his genius and strength 
of character, and we believe in the remarkable strength of character of the 
young women of this school (ninety-five per cent, of whom I understand 
are paying their expenses out of their own scanty earnings). I say that this 
has so impressed itself upon our minds that we feel we can do nothing 
more worthy of ourselves than to help on the work here. 

And, therefore, with merely these opening remarks, with this word, 
which is but a word of approval, I take pleasure in introducing to you 
Dr. Wallace Buttrick, secretary of the General Education Board, who has 
an important announcement to make. 

Dr. Buttrick said: 

Following the example of Mr. Baldwin, I address myself to the 
ladies of Georgia. May I be indulged a single word before reading what 
I am authorized to read from this paper, and say that yesterday morn- 
ing, having the high privilege of meeting you in this chapel, and looking 
into your earnest faces and having since taken occasion to learn something 
of the heroic self-sacrifice on the part of many of you here in the devotion 
of your lives to the cause of popular education, I have the greatest pleas- 



ure in carrying out the authority of my associates of the General Educa- 
tion Board in making the following announcement: 

The General Education Board will subscribe to the Georgia 
State Normal School at Athens, for a period of three years, fifty 
scholarships of $50 each, to meet the forty-six scholarships now 
provided by the women of Georgia ; $2,500 a year for three years, 
$7,500 in all. 

In addition to the above, the General Education Board will 
duplicate for a period of three years new scholarships of $50 each 
that may be provided by the women of Georgia before January ist, 
1903, up to a number not exceeding fifty. Understanding that the 
women of Georgia have raised $6,000 toward a fund of $15,000 
for the erection of the Winnie Davis Memorial Hall, the General 
Education Board will subscribe one-half the balance, or $4,500, 
provided the remaining balance is subscribed before January ist, 
1903. 

(Signed) 

William H. Baldwin, Jr., Chairman, 

George Foster Peabody, Treasurer, 

Wallace Buttrick, Secretary and Executive Officer, 

J. L. M. Curry, 

Frederick T. Gates, 

Daniel C. Gilman, 

Morris K. Jesup, 

Robert C. Ogden, 

Walter H. Page, 

Albert Shaw. 

I may be permitted to say that if the conditions specified in this an- 
nouncement are complied with to the full extent of the offer — as no doubt 
they will be — the total amount of this contribution of the General Educa- 
tion Board will be $19,500. I would add that the gift to the Winnie Davis 
Memorial Hall is made in the recognition of the fact that this is Memorial 
Day and that this is a supremely appropriate contribution to the Daughters 
of the Confederacy. It is to the young women who are entering into one 
of the noblest inheritances of the world that we crave the privilege of 
making these gifts. We ask that we may have a little part in the great 
work which has been inaugurated by the people of the South and in which 
the women of Georgia are bearing so honorable and noble a part. 

Governor Northen called a rising recognition of the gift on 
the part of the audience. 

A paper on "Educational Supervision" was presented by Dr. 
William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education. 



An address on "The Denominational College and Popular 
Education" was delivered by Professor H. N. Snyder, of Wofford 
College, South Carolina. 

Addresses were also delivered by: Dr. Albert Shaw, Editor 
of the Review of Reviews; Hon. Emory Speer, Judge of the 
United States Court for the Southern District of Georgia; Hon. 
John H. Small, member of Congress from North Carolina. 

Lunch was served to the members of the Conference by the 
young women of the State Normal School. 

The afternoon of Saturday was given to attendance upon the 
exercises of Memorial Day. 

EVENING SESSION. —Saturday, April 26, 8:00 

The session was convened in the Lucy Cobb Institute. The 
Committee on Resolutions, through Dr. Walter H. Page, sub- 
mitted the following report, which was unanimously adopted: 

The Southern Educational Conference makes these declarations : 

1. The unending campaign that this Conference met to further is a 
campaign not only for the free education of all the people, but for free 
education of such efficiency as shall make the coming generation of citi- 
zens of the Southern States the best trained men and women that an en- 
lightened democracy can produce. To this end it urges the increase of 
taxes for school use, the lengthening of school terms, the better payment 
of teachers as fast as prudent regard for the economic conditions of every 
community will permit. 

2. Since the free education of all the people is the foundation of a 
democracy and the highest function of enlightened commonwealths, this 
Conference applauds the patriotic position taken by those Governors and 
other public servants who have made it the foremost policy of their ad- 
ministrations ; and it applauds also the newspaper press and the pulpit 
that emphasizes it as the basis of good citizenship. 

3. The Conference commends the example of those communities 
that have levied special local taxes for school betterment, and the public- 
spirited citizens of towns and cities who by private subscription have aided 
the establishment and the equipment of schools in neighboring rural com- 
munities; and it urges vigorous agitation in those states that do not per- 
mit local taxation for the adoption of such a law. It urges also more gen- 
erous state aid to normal schools whose graduates teach in the public 
schools, especially in the rural public schools; it asks for better equipment 
of school-houses till the country public schools shall have the best trained 
and most efficient teachers that can anywhere be provided ; men and women 



who by temperament and by training shall be equal to the best work de- 
manded by modern experience, for the best teaching in the world should 
be given where it is most needed — in the rural public schools. 

4. The Conference commends to all the state legislatures the enact- 
ment of such a law as some have already enacted, authorizing the use of 
a small portion of the school funds for the establishment of district school 
libraries wherever the citizens of the school districts shall subscribe a like 
amount for their maintenance. 

5. While pedagogical method does not fall within the range of the 
subjects considered by this Conference, it nevertheless wishes to declare 
its settled conviction that the training of the hand is of equal value with 
the training of the mind, and that the two should go together in public 
school work, both as a matter of discipline and as a matter of preparation 
for all those industries that are related to the natural economic develop- 
ment of the people. 

6. The Bureau of the Southern Education Board at Knoxville, Ten- 
nessee is systematically investigating the conditions of the schools, in 
association with the campaign of education to arouse public opinion that 
is conducted under the direction of the Southern Education Board. It 
invites the co-operation of all school officers and teachers, editors, public 
servants and public-spirited citizens. 

On motion of Dr. Walter H. Page the following resolution 
of thanks was adopted : 

The Conference expresses its hearty thanks to the railroads, to the 
AthenjEum Club, to the Young Men's Christian Association, to the local 
committees, to the city authorities, to the University of Georgia, to the 
State Normal School and to the Lucy Cobb Institute for their courteous 
generosity. 

To the citizens of Athens the Conference expresses its lasting gratitude 
for their most gracious hospitality. The Conference has received an added 
inspiration from their graceful and thoughtful attentions. For the citizens 
of Athens have indeed graced the activities of the new era with the most 
perfect flower of the old era, and so done a courteous service as to make 
it an act of personal friendship. 

Addresses were delivered by Professor Henry W. Farnham, 
of Yale University, and Dr. Felix Adler, of New York City. 

Dr. Charles W. Dabney moved that the President of this 
Conference send to Dr. J. L. M. Curry, then on his way to the 
Court of Spain as Ambassador Extraordinary, a cablegram of 
respect, and report to him the success of the meeting. The motion 
was adopted. 

Addresses were delivered by President Houston, of the 

8 



Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas ; President J. B. 
Aswell, of the Industrial Institute of the State of Louisiana; the 
Hon. J. W. Abercrombie, State Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion for Alabama; Mr. Edward T. Sanford, of Knoxville, Ten- 
nessee; Dr. John Graham Brooks, of Massachusetts; Hon. John 
J. McMahan, Superintendent of Public Instruction of South 
Carolina, and Dean James E. Russell, of the Teachers' College 
of New York City. 

President Ogden then said: 

It now becomes my duty as the presiding officer of this Conference 
to state that its formal sessions have come to a close. 

I desirCj however, on the part of all who have come from a distance, 
to thank the Committee on Resolutions in that they have given so adequate 
an expression of our feelings toward Athens and the Athens people. I 
desire to assure all who are interested that this expression, although an 
official action, is in no way formal or perfunctory, but voices the earnest, 
lively sentiment of all of' us who have enjoyed the gracious hospitality of 
the citizens of Athens. This hospitality, at once so genial and so delight- 
ful, has given us an insight into a certain something, indescribable, per- 
haps, a gentleness of family life in your homes and — may I say it — a sim- 
plicity in your lives, that has been an added and sweet charm to our visit. 

With these feelings we shall go away, cherishing the thought that 
while we gather here upon very serious business — for none who have trav- 
elled from any distance to this Conference have travelled for the mere 
purpose of recreation, neither have we come for social enjoyment; we have 
come for serious purposes and these purposes have been well served — and 
yet because of the cordial hospitality that we have received at your hands 
we are going away with a larger patriotism, a broader view and a better 
citizenship, better in all respects than when we came here. And, although 
after another day this occasion will be but a memory, still it will ever be 
an inspiration and a hope — the memory will always be sweeter and the 
hope will always be brighter because we have been here. 

And now, as there appears to be no further business, by virtue of my 
responsibility as your presiding officer, I declare the Fifth Conference for 
Education in the South adjourned. 



ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT 

By BOBERT C. OGDEN, of New York City 

THE program prepared for the g-uidance of the Fifth Annual 
Conference for Education in the South contains a com- 
mand that a feature of the opening proceedings shall be 
the President's address. 

Formal reports are almost of necessity dry and perfunctory. 
It is my duty to present certain facts and I am deeply conscious 
of the lack of the rare power that can make statistics eloquent. 
Therefore the report of details will be made by the several active 
representatives of the work that has been founded upon the action 
of this Conference one year ago. The results of that action have 
been extremely important and should claim your serious consid- 
eration. But it appears even more important that the Conference 
should at the very threshold of another year of organic existence 
realise the quality and quantity of its own spiritual and intellectual 
life. If this convocation is to reach its highest possibilities of 
influence and its largest practical force in the cause of education 
it must be through the power of a spiritual fire kindled at the 
sacred altar of self-sacrifice. 

This Conference exists for a holy cause — holy 
The Raison -^^ ^^^ highest sense. Its creed reflects the divine 
Conference ^o\Q, broad and beneficient as the universal sunshine 
and expressed in the single simple dogma that every 
child in this broad land possesses the natural right to a good Eng- 
lish education. The mission of this Conference is by means of a 
sweet reasonableness working through many and diverse agencies 
to so enforce its dogma that the moral rights of children to educa- 
tion shall by law, by philanthropy, by public opinion, be made for- 
ever so secure that they shall nevermore be questioned. Thus it 
may come about that the capacity for intelligent citizenship, the 
opportunity for abundant life, the enjoyment of liberty, the attain- 
ment of happiness become universal possibilities. 

10 



This is a serious assembly, even though it be free in spirit and 
libera, in terms of membership. But the mere fact of personal 
presence marks each man and each woman in attendance as sym- 
pathetic with the purpose of the Conference. 

There was a broad character impressed upon 
Ch^°^ t ^^^ Conference by Captain Sale, of Capon Springs, 

the hospitable convener of the first three annual con- 
vocations, in the bringing together of representative people inter- 
ested in education, from South and North, West and East. Thus 
from the start it was geographically cosmopolitan. The same char- 
acteristic appears in the places of its later meetings, last year the 
ancient home of the Moravian faith at Winston-Salem was the 
home of the Conference, and this year it enjoys the hospitality 
of the city of Athens, rich in academic tradition. Each place 
exhibits various and different phases of American life and in- 
fluence that forbid merely local or provincial features to mark the 
life of the Conference. 

Still further the personnel is cosmopolitan in a marked de- 
gree. Here are governors of states, officers of great corporations, 
educators of every degree, clergymen of many communions, edi- 
tors, authors, bankers, merchants, lawyers, who, for the time 
being, have set aside their several cares for the larger interests of 
our common country. And the crowning grace, influence and 
power of this assembly appears in the presence of so many good 
women who have found in the great cause represented here a call 
to put away for a while the duties of home and the claims of social 
obligations. 

With great earnestness, therefore, I ask the Conference to 
accept the opinion that in its thoroughly cosmopolitan character 
may be found a most hopeful forecast of its fifth annual pro- 
ceedings. 

„ , . , I hope it will not be considered ill-timed to give 

National , • r • • ■, ,• • , r 

Conditions brief attention to some national conditions that fur- 
nish the perspective in which this Conference and its 
proceedings should be considered. 

The boastful period of our national life is easily within the 
memory of many now present. Blatant expressions of pride in 
our bigness, greatness and progress were marked traits of pro- 

II 



vincial development. In those days we took small account of the 
limitations of widely varying economic interests and of the inheri- 
tance from the Fathers of vital differences upon constitutional 
questions, both of which were a constant menace, and they have 
been removed by the court of last resort, through experiences that 
were painful and costly. Out of the conflict came a legal national 
unity, that was of necessity deeply impressed with bitterness and 
misunderstanding. And then followed a period of political error 
and consequent distress that long kept alive and active the diver- 
gencies that began in fundamental conditions. Even this brief 
reference to the shadows of the past can only be tolerated as 
affording the distance for a brighter foreground. The kindly hand 
of time has soothed many wounds ; and so from the story of the 
past we may without passion or prejudice gain wisdom for the 
present and guidance for the future. Therefore as reasonable and 
sensible people we may well inquire what the opinions that we or 
our Fathers held in 1861 upon questions that are forever settled 
have to do with the discharge of mutual duties that now lay an 
imperious command upon present strength and resources. If we 
are willing to omit the past from present associations, we are ready 
for the upward and outward look and the forward step. 

The dawn of the twentieth century marks no change in the 
forces of nature ; the days, years and centuries will come and go 
as have other days and other years and other centuries. The cal- 
endar marks the fleet foot of time — we write seasons and dates as 
always before. But in moral and national things the new century 
is an advent to the world at large and an Epiphany to our Coun- 
try. There is a sudden manifestation of accumulated power. 
Masses of capital rush together with magnetic impulse and in 
startling magnitude. This unity of money concentrates material 
things that have common interests and suddenly reveals vast pro- 
duction heretofore unrealised. Community of interest pools in 
concrete form values that had not been comprehended in detail. 
And so, while the new century creates nothing, it lifts the veil and 
reveals a gigantic life — a life that growing silently in wide dif- 
fusion was not known, understood, nor appreciated until the laws 
of finance and commerce breathed into it the breath of larger or- 
ganized life. This material life is national. Prosperity is its crea- 



12 



tor and its benediction. Diffused prosperity is a solvent that 
fuses and melts and moulds. 

Simultaneously with this realization of things an intellectual 
awakening- appears. Generous facilities for research are placed 
at the command of science. The increase of endowment to great 
institutions of learning is the recognition of the debt that wealth 
owes to scholarship. Testimony to the growing demand of young 
America for higher education is manifest in the great increase and 
still growing contingent of students in our universities. Now as 
never before are the contributions of science to the comforts of 
living, the preservation of human life, the amelioration of suffer- 
ing, the general distribution of information, the unification of the 
human race popularly acknowledged. 

And more than all this the inspiration of the new century 
appears in the awakening of the public conscience to the moral 
responsibility that recognizes the increasing duties of stewardship 
that accompany accumulating wealth, higher education and grow- 
ing power. The restless anxiety for service may sometimes find 
only crude or clumsy expression, but the very effort expresses the 
stimulus of an aroused conscience. 

Admit these statements — brief and incomplete — and the con- 
clusion is certain that never until the years that mark the early 
dawn of the twentieth century have we had in a political, moral 
or material sense a complete nation. Therefore the perspective of 
the Fifth Conference for Education in the South is a country 
united and blessed. The personal deduction is that duty grows in 
proportion to prosperity and blessing. 

The clarion call of patriotism summons this 
A Band 
„ _ Assembly and rings out the key-note for its utter- 

ances, altruism pure and simple gives it vitality, 
human brotherhood is the tie that binds it together. If this be 
true, pessimism can find no foothold here and selfishness no stand- 
ing ground. This Conference is a Band of Hope. 

We are gathered here under conditions that demand thought 
and charity, energy and enthusiasm. Here are representatives of 
material, mental and spiritual interests, the hand, head and heart 
of the country, combined in one patriotic impulse. Patriotism is 
equally the characteristic of all true citizens, be they artisans or 

13 



scholars, teachers or preachers, business or professional men. 
Therefore, putting God and country first, let it be the high resolve, 
the purpose of each mind and heart, that this convocation shall 
be a dynamic force for a popular educational uplift. 

Five years ago the concentric waves of this Conference began 
their pulsating circles of teaching influence. With each recurring 
Assembly the rings of power have grown in strength as they have 
gained in circumference, and thus the duty comes with the com- 
mand that we, here gathered, give to the common cause the fresh 
impulse of larger power, making such success of the past as will 
lay upon each succeeding future Conference the burden of still 
greater achievement. With such a spirit, which will certainly 
receive inspiration from the progressive developments of the Con- 
ference, our coming together will have the blessed crown of 
usefulness and the seal of approving conscience. 

Regarding the executive work planned last year 
Executive j j^^^^ ^^^^ ^^-^^^ statements. 

work of ,^. _, .,,,..., , 

the Year ^^^^' Concernmg the publication of the record 

of the proceedings of the Fourth Conference for 
Education in the South, I have to state that two thousand copies 
were handsomely printed and tastefully bound. They have been 
widely circulated gratuitously. A few copies remain, some of 
which are here, and so long as they last will be freely given to 
any who may need them. They are full of valuable and inter- 
esting information. 

Second. Under the authorit}'- of the Platform and Resolu- 
tions adopted at the last Conference, I appointed the following 
named seven gentlemen as an Executive Board: Hon. J. L. M. 
Curry, Washington, D. C. ; Dr. E. A. Alderman, New Orleans, 
La.; Dr. C. D. Mclver, Greensboro, N. C. ; Dr. C. W. Dabney, 
Knoxville, Tenn. ; Dr. H. B. Frissell, Hampton, Va. ; Dr. Wallace 
Buttrick, Albany, N. Y. ; George Foster Peabody, Esq., New 
York City. 

By special vote of the Conference I was created a member 
of the Board in advance of its appointment. 

The entire Board assembled in New York, Tuesday, Novem- 
ber 5th, 1901, and met daily for five successive days. An organi- 
zation was effected by the election of Robert C. Ogden, Chair- 

14 



man ; Charles D. Mclver, Secretary, and George Foster Peabody, 
Treasurer. 

The first action of the Board was to increase its membership 
by the selection of the following four gentlemen: William H. 
Baldwin, Jr., Esq., New York City ; Dr. Albert Shaw, New York 
City ; Dr. Walter H. Page, New York City ; Hon. H. H. Hanna, 
Indianapolis. 

The Southern Education Board of the Conference for Educa- 
tion in the South is the official title. 

Field Work was planned by the appointment of Dr. Curry 
as Supervising Director, Drs. Alderman, Mclver and Frissell as 
District Directors, Dr. Dabney as Chief of the Bureau of Investi- 
gation, Information and Publication. 

The five named foregoing were united as a Campaign Com- 
mittee, with Dr. Curry as Chairman. 

Dr. G. S. Dickerman and Dr. Booker T. Washington were 
appointed Field Agents. 

Rev. Edgar Gardner Murphy was associated with the Chair- 
man as Secretary in Executive Work. 

Hon. Henry St. George Tucker and Dr. Robert Frazer are 
associated with Dr. H. B. Frissell in Virginia. 

Prof. P. P. Claxton and Prof. J. D. Eggleston, Jr., are asso- 
ciated with Dr. C. W. Dabney at Knoxville. 

This large and complete organization demands a generous 
sum of money for its maintenance. A small part only has been 
subscribed, but the monthly payments for all the expenses are 
promptly advanced through the faith of a generous friend. 

The Board has not been incorporated and may not be. Its 
function as defined by itself is to prosecute a propaganda of Edu- 
cation and not to assist schools or institutions. 

Parallel to the Southern Education Board there has been 
formed the Board of the General Education Fund for the receipt 
and disbursements of money for educational purposes. The Presi- 
dent of this Board is Mr. William H. Baldwin Jr., the Executive 
Secretary is Dr. Wallace Buttrick, and the Treasurer is Mr. 
George Foster Peabody. This Board has been placed in funds 
by generous friends and has begun active work. Seven gentle- 
men are members of both Boards. Perfect co-operation is thus 

15 



secured. In addifion the Boards of the Peabody and Slater Funds 
are represented in both the newly-formed Boards, and the outcome 
of the whole matter is a community of interest that secures har- 
mony and economy and prevents duplication. 

The general work only began on the first of January, and 
yet the energetic earnestness that has marked every branch of the 
operations has created at a single bound a powerful and effective 
organization. I have in my possession written accounts from 
all branches of the work. Back of each paper is a most interesting 
influential personality. Therefore details will be omitted now 
and at the opening of to-morrow's session brief accounts will be 
given by : 

Dr. Frissell from Virginia. His local associates will be heard 
later. 

Dr. Mclver will inform us of the great educational revival 
that is sweeping over North Carolina. 

Dr. Alderman will give an account of his interviews with 
the Legislatures of Mississippi and Louisiana. 

Dr. Dabney will report for the Ordnance Department of the 
campaign — the statistical bureau. He is the embodiment and 
incarnation of facts, a challenge and a menace to every educational 
Gradgrind. 

The absence of our leader and Nestor, Dr. Curry, will be 
deeply felt. We would as deeply deplore his absence were it not 
that he is now sailing eastward across the Atlantic upon a most 
honorable mission as the personal representative of the President 
of the United States and extraordinary envoy of the Government 
at the approaching coronation of the King of Spain. We rejoice 
over this distinction that has come to the Chairman of our Cam- 
paign Committee and Supervising Director with a consciousness 
that in honoring Dr. Curry the President has honored himself and 
has honored us. 

As these several reports come before our 

-. , , thought and attention we will be carried awav from 

School ^ . , . , ' . 

the urban surroundmgs m which so many of us 

dwell into simple rural conditions. In the vast proportions and 

teeming populations of our great cities we are too apt to think 

that the social problems of the period are only to be found in 

i6 



cit*es. That appeal comes to us without cessation and for its 
solution many and powerful agencies are successfully at work. 
The principal object before this Conference is the rural public 
school of the Southern States. Within these States, not including 
several of the so-called border states, is to be found one-fourth 
of the school population of the United States. Take that fact with 
the additional fact that about eighty per cent, of the entire popu- 
lation of those states is rural and you have conditions exactly 
opposite to the situation that confronts you in the city. A study 
of the case develops some most interesting questions. 

, ^ .^ This conference has not concerned itself with 

A Life 
Problem professional educational theories, holding to the 

opinion that such affairs belong to other organiza- 
tions. Nevertheless, the query as to the proper methods for the 
education of the children throughout these vast areas will not 
down. It is a topic that may well challenge the careful thought 
of every intelligent person whether educator or not. 

It is a problem of life — the whole life. Mr. Branson, the 
principal of the State Normal School in Athens, has given us in 
his article, "The Real Southern Problem," a splendid statement 
of the case, undoubtedly the best statement upon the subject that 
has ever been printed. He shows how needful it is to fill the 
vacant mind, to stimulate the sluggish thought, how this is to be 
done by instruction that shall not only enable children to read 
and write, but shall show them how to economize time, to manage 
a farm, to properly cook food, to keep house, in short to create 
character and a complete life. As one of our number so often 
remarks, we must come to these people that they may have life 
and have it more abundantly. Truly this work is Christ-like. 

Is there not here a new question for pedagogy to solve? If 
millions of money were ready, where are the teachers? It is 
most interesting to know that in this audience are many thought- 
ful, accomplished and practical educators who are putting keen 
minds, large experience and earnest sympathy into the solution 
of this question. 

Out of the case comes the silent appeal of millions of children 
of school age. With this appeal comes the cry of our coimtry with 
a stern demand that from this child-material good citizens for the 

17 



future shall be furnished. It is our duty to so echo and re-echo 
these appeals that the ignorant shall rise up and by the mere force 
of human right demand adequate education, that the people shall 
tax themselves for education, that school authorities shall pro- 
mote the best ideas of education, and that philanthropy shall 
supply the lacking margin beyond the capacity of the public purse 
and private local liberality. 

As already stated, the great institutions for higher education 
are appealing to accumulated w^ealth most successfully and prop- 
erly for generous endowment. The antiphon to that appeal comes 
in the voice of the humble and the obscure pleading for the bread 
of better intellectual life; that simple, practical learning, without 
which there can be no useful, happy, progressive existence. 

It has been the beautiful mission of this Con- 
, g . .. ference to bring into sympathetic accord and to har- 
monize into associated usefulness many great-souled 
individuals having common educational ideals, aspirations and 
hopes. Throughout the rural South they have been isolated, 
lonely, each thinking that there was no companionship in the cause 
held so dear. But now this Conference makes a broad standing 
ground and the group is foimd to be far more numerous than any 
had supposed. Nor is the company limited to locality, for the 
North and the East adds to the quota certain others who only ask 
to share in the burden. The Northern members of this Confer- 
ence have gladly come each succeeding year in response to cordial 
invitation to help carry as best they may the load that seems too 
heavy to be borne in localities where sparse population or narrow 
means give insufficient public revenue and make private liberality 
impossible. With no pride of opinion or dictation as to method, 
working through men born on the soil and by local machinery 
they come in fraternal spirit with such means as they can com- 
mand and such experience as they can contribute. 

As information about this Conference becomes more widely 
diffused it is watched by ever increasing numbers of teachers and 
parents. Here at this central Southern point, at this University, 
chartered in 1785, this Conference is placed as a beacon light upon 
a hill. Let no doubtful expression or uncertain sound go forth. 
Education for all the people; good, well-equipped school-houses 

18 



with competent teachers and an eight months' term in every school 
district — let this and nothing less be the aim of this Conference. 
The road may be long, and some of us will fall by the wayside 
before the end is reached. But it can be and will be reached if 
we and such as we with us are true and faithful. 

To doubt would be disloyalty, 
To falter would be sin. 



19 



THE WORK IN NORTH CAROLINA 

Beport of CHABLES D. McIVEB, District Director of Southern 
Education Board 

Mr. President: 

I beg to submit, in accordance with your request, this state- 
ment in regard to my work as one of the district directors of the 
Southern Education Board. 

As the Southern Educational Conference was held a year ago 
at Winston-Salem in this State, I feel that the members of the 
Conference will be gratified to know that North Carolina's edu- 
cational condition is improving daily and that the outlook is 
bright. 

We have taken an honest inventory of our educational posses- 
sions and needs, and made a determination to improve the former, 
and, wherever possible, to supply the latter. 

For more than ten years there have been in the State a num- 
ber of active workers and agitators in behalf of better public 
school facilities, but the teaching profession has never been so well 
united upon this point as at present, nor has its opinion ever before 
commanded the general respect from all classes of citizens that 
it does to-day. 

Since the last meeting of the Southern Educational Confer- 

/ence there have been about thirty elections in the villages and 

' towns of North Carolina, and a half-dozen elections in the rural 

districts, to decide whether or not a special local school tax should 

be levied, and in only three or four of these communities has the 

cause of public education been defeated. 

During the past year about four hundred libraries have been 
established in connection with rural schools. One-third of the 
money for these libraries has come from the State Treasury, one- 
third from local school funds, and the other third from private 
donations. 

Probably no other year in the history of the State has wit- 

20 




2; 



nessed so large a number of donations to public and private edu- 
cational purposes. So much for general conditions. 

As District Director of the Southern Education Board my 
work has necessarily been confined largely to my own State. 

It was the understanding at the last session of the Board 
that, if practicable, a vigorous campaign for the improvement of 
*the public schools of North Carolina should be inaugurated. 
Knowing that it would be unwise and useless to undertake such 
a campaign except in hearty co-operation with the educational 
authorities of the State, I laid our plans and purposes before the 
Governor, Honorable Charles B. Aycock, and the State Superin- 
tendent of Public Instruction, General Thomas F. Toon, both of 
whom gave their hearty endorsement to the movement and ex- 
pressed their appreciation of the spirit in which the Southern 
Education Board desired to aid in our educational development. 
The Raleiglx ^" account of the long-continued illness of 

Conference General Toon, it was impossible to have a confer- 
ence with him during the month of January; but on- 
February 13th he and Governor Aycock united with me in calling 
to Raleigh a conference of about forty teachers representing all 
lines of educational work. Representatives of the state colleges 
and denominational colleges, county superintendents and city 
superintendents, representatives of high schools and seminaries of 
every class were present. The conference made a declaration 
against illiteracy and issued a striking address to the people of 
North Carolina. There was perfect harmony in the meeting and 
a unanimity of sentiment that the com.bined educational influences 
of the State should be brought to bear upon the improvement of 
the rural public schools. A campaign was inaugurated to secure 
the consolidation of weak school districts, the improvement of 
public school-houses, and the adoption of local taxation to supple- 
ment the state school tax. 

The Governor, the State Superintendent, and your District 
Director were made the Executive Committee of this association 
and the managers of the campaign. The address was published 
by practically all the newspapers in the State and copies were 
furnished to students of colleges and pastors of all churches. 

A special committee was appointed to furnish educational 



21 



matter for the newspapers from time to time, and another com- 
mittee to make a special request of every preacher in North Caro- 
hna to deliver to his congreg^ation at least one sermon a year on 
the subject of public education. 

From the beginning, this movement had the almost unani- 
mous endorsement of the press of the State. 

Soon after the inauguration of this campaign occurred the 
death of State Superintendent Toon. The Governor called Mr. 
James Y. Joyner, Professor of English in the State Normal and 
Industrial College, to the State Superintendency. General Toon 
had not been well enough to attend the conference in Raleigh, but 
wrote a letter suggesting a wise policy for the campaign. I 
should like to record here that the illness which resulted in Gen- 
eral Toon's death was brought on by exposure while on a cam- 
paign in company with the Governor, to secure the adoption of 
local taxation for schools in the eastern part of the State. Two of 
the districts in which he made addresses have since voted a special 
local tax. 

Honorable J. Y. Joyner has shown his eminent fitness for 
taking up this work, and has begun a very vigorous educational 
.administration. Though still under forty years of age, he has had 
successful experience as county superintendent, city superintend- 
ent, institute instructor, and college professor. 

In accordance with the plan adopted at the Ra- 
Distnct J . , conference, the Executive Committee has de- 

cided to hold district conferences at accessible cen- 
ters in various portions of the State. To these conferences county 
superintendents and other school officers will be invited, and also 
•other workers for public education. These conferences will give 
the State Superintendent an opportunity to confer with the county 
superintendents, and inaugurate a uniform policy for developing 
the educational work of the State. At least one large mass meet- 
ing will be held in connection with each conference, at which 
addresses will be made by the Governor, the State Superintendent 
and others. These district conferences will be held at such places 
as will furnish free entertainment for the delegates. The railroad 
expenses of the county superintendents will be paid out of the 
campaign fund provided by the Southern Education Board. The 



22 



compensation of these officers is so small that we do not feel that 
they ought to be asked to give their time and pay their traveling 
expenses in order to attend these meetings. 

The first of the district conferences was held 
^^® April 3rd and 4th in Greensboro, and about twenty 

Conference counties were represented by their superintendents 
or other school officers. The Presidents of the state 
colleges, and Presidents or other representatives of most of the 
denominational colleges attended the Greensboro conference. 
Finding some liberal-hearted gentlemen in Greensboro disposed to 
raise a fund by popular subscription to be used for aiding those 
rural districts in Guilford County which would vote upon them- 
selves a local tax to improve their schools, I wrote an urgent letter 
to President W. H. Baldwin, Jr., of the General Education Board, 
and Dr. Wallace Buttrick, the Executive Officer of that Board, 
asking the General Education Board to duplicate these subscrip- 
tions to an amount not exceeding four thousand dollars. The 
General Education Board, which had just opened its New York 
offices two days before our conference, generously complied with 
the request, sending Dr. Buttrick to Greensboro to represent it 
in the conference and to make the following proposition: 

"The General Education Board will duplicate all private sub- 
scriptions made by the people of Guilford County, North Carolina, 
for the public schools in Guilford County to an amount not ex- 
ceeding four thousand dollars ($4,000) in all, provided that in 
each case school districts where such gifts are made shall have 
levied a special local tax for free public schools for all the people, 
and provided further that the appropriation from this Board in 
fulfillment of its pledge shall be paid to each of the several districts 
through the North Carolina State Department of Public Instruc- 
tion when information is received that the above conditions have 
been fulfilled." 

The mass meeting readily raised more than four thousand 
dollars for the improvement of the rural schools of Guilford 
County. None of this money can be used in the city of Greens- 
horo, where it was raised, nor can any of it be used for any dis- 
trict in the county which does not levy a local tax upon its prop- 
erty. The visit of Dr. Buttrick was valuable in many wavs. His 

23 



frank, tactful manner, his enthusiasm and hearty sympathy with 
the occasion won the hearts of our people, and greatly aided all 
those interested in the educational work of the State. 

An Executive Committee of prominent citizens was appointed 
to carry out the purposes of the Greensboro conference, and they 
are now planning a vigorous campaign to secure the consolidation 
of school districts and the voting of a local tax in every district 
in Guilford County. One of these districts, about six miles from 
Greensboro, had already voted a special tax of 33 1-3 cents on each 
hundred dollars' worth of property to supplement the state tax of 
eighteen cents on the hundred dollars' worth of property, and they 
are now endeavoring to raise money by private subscription to 
erect a better school building. To encourage this movement, the 
Executive Committee of the Greensboro conference offered to give 
one dollar for every two raised by the local community for this 
purpose, and at the close of their public school a few days ago 
more than twelve hundred dollars was thus raised and the amount 
will be increased to fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars. This 
was done in a community which has not more than forty taxpayers 
whose property is assessed on the tax-books for as much as one 
thousand dollars each. It is significant, too, that the largest sub- 
scription was only fifty dollars, and many of them were one, two, 
five, and ten dollars. It is also very significant that a number of 
the subscriptions were made by men who not less than a year ago 
opposed the levying of the special local tax in that community. A 
similar proposition to the one made to this school district will be 
made to all other districts in the county willing to levy a local tax 
to erect suitable school-houses and otherwise make their schools 
effective. Thus every dollar given by the General Education Board 
not only secured another dollar at the Greensboro conference, but 
each dollar of that general fund will probably cause the invest- 
ment of from two to ten dollars in the free public education work 
of Guilford County. 

A conference similar to the one held in Greensboro will be 
held in Charlotte on May ist and 2nd. Towns and cities in every 
section of the State have asked the privilege of entertaining one of 
the district conferences. 



24 



"Women -^s a part of the campaign for the improvement 

to Improve of pubHc educational facilities in North Carolina, the 
Public School students of the State Normal and Industrial College 
Houses have organized a Women's Association for the Bet- 

terment of the Public School Houses in North Carolina. It is 
their plan to unite in this organization not only the former students 
of the State Normal and Industrial College, but public-spirited 
women in every locality. Local associations will be formed about 
each public school house for the purpose of beautifying and im- 
proving generally these school houses. 

The Greensboro conference produced a deep impression upon 
the State and it is the beginning. of a great movement for the pro- 
m.otion of proper school facilities for the children of North Caro- 
lina. The leading newspapers of the State have in their news 
columns and also in their editorial comments given enthusiastic 
aid to the movement. 

Too Rapid I hope that the Southern Education Board and 

Progress the Southern Educational Conference will remem- 

Must Not \)QY that those who are leading this movement are ex- 
Be Expected ceedingly busy people, and are carrying heavy bur- 
dens connected with their regular work. Too rapid progress can- 
not be expected in a campaign which must be managed tactfully, 
though vigorously, by the use of such time as the leaders can spare 
from their regular employment. 

After our district conferences shall have been held, the Execu- 
tive Committee of the central association will know in what coun- 
ties and in what communities of those counties it will be best to 
prosecute an active campaign to secure an increase of funds for 
schools. During the summer months we propose to place in the 
field the best available educational speakers. During the two-year 
campaign in which the Southern Education Board proposes to give 
its assistance, I doubt not that great good will come to the cause of 
universal education. 

No amount of money could have secured such 

The Neces- progress as we now have reason to hope for without 

f^^.. " the leadership of our "Educational Governor" and 

our progressive and popular State Superintendent, 

backed by a united teaching profession. I desire to say, however, 

25 



what is equally true, that without the substantial and sympathetic 
aid given by the Southern Education Board and that promised by 
the General Education Board we could not have organized the 
educational forces at this time so as to accomplish the great things 
that evidently will be accomplished within the next two years. 

For myself personally, I desire to express to you and to the 
Southern Education Board the great satisfaction it gives me to 
represent it and to act as its agent in giving what service I can to 
the people of my State and the people of the other Southern 
states. 

In the service of the Board, in addition to my work in North 
Carolina, including a very large correspondence with people in 
and out of the State, I have visited Richmond for a conference 
with Dr. Frissell and other representatives of the Southern Edu- 
cation Board in Virginia ; Athens and Atlanta in the State of 
Georgia ; Columbia, South Carolina ; Washington and Baltimore. 

The Board of Directors of the North Carolina State Normal 
and Industrial College have kindly permitted me to give to the 
service of the Southern Education Board such portion of my time 
for the great work undertaken as can be spared from my duties as 
President of their institution. 

There only remains for me to convey to you, in a word if I 
may, my profound sense of gratitude for the privilege of taking 
part in this great work, and the due appreciation that I hope I 
have of its importance and its attendant responsibilities. 



2(> 



THE WORK IN LOUISIANA AND MISSISSIPPI 

Report of EDWIN A. ALDERMAN, District Director of the Southern 

Education Board 

Mr. President: 

I beg to submit the followinsf brief statement concerning my 
work as District Director of the Southern Education Board. I 
undertook the work of this Board on January ist, giving to it such 
time as my duties as President of Tulane University would per- 
mit. On January ist I had Hved in Louisiana ten months and my 
problems had been problems of an urban nature relating to the 
City of New Orleans and Tulane University. My first problem 
above all was to learn the State of Louisiana, its men, its teaching 
force, its educational spirit, and its educational condition. My 
knowledge of the purposes of this Board, in so far as those pur- 
poses had found expression, convinced me that the truest wisdom 
was to make haste slowly, and not to commit the work to any 
inadequate or emotional line of policy. 

There were many difficulties to overcome. 
Work There was that in the idea itself that needed to be 

presented with delicacy, and yet with utter sincerity 
and plain-spoken firmness. I therefore gave such parts of the 
months of January and February as I had at my command to that 
service and made an extended tour through the State, making 
addresses to large audiences at the chief towns — New Orleans, 
Shreveport, Ruston, Monroe, Franklin — and into Mississippi, ad- 
dressing the Legislature at Jackson. It is, as I have said, no easy 
matter to acquaint oneself with men and conditions and traditions 
so that the wisest instruments, the ablest leaders, the wisest policy 
may be enlisted in the service of a great idea. It was essential in 
this whole crusade to convince the people that it was not a move- 
ment which tended in any way to diminish their self-respect in 
the matter of receiving aid, but was rather a recognition by large- 

27 



hearted men of the great services performed by them under ardu- 
ous difficulties. 

And it was essential again to annex this new 

^i'^*i'"!*^ line of educational effort to the old f ftorts that have 
of Effort 

been in progress dunng the pas' twentv years. 

There would have been resentment against zw :: - umpti.-ii that 
this work was some new plan of salvation. Or.e can understand 
this, for everywhere throughout that State and oLher states are 
numbers of earnest men who by personal effort, by organized asso- 
ciations, by tongue and pen and press have been seeking the same 
results now sought in this larger and better organized fashion. 
In view of this necessity to make no break in the continuity of 
effort, I had personal conferences with the Governor of the State, 
with the State Superintendent of Education, in Louisiana and 
Mississippi, and with the presidents and principals and superin- 
tendents of different institutions, private, denominational and pub- 
lic, searching for the right men and the spirit of the common- 
wealth, I also put myself in communication with the press of the 
State, and I want to say here that the press of the State has 
responded with intelligence, with sympathy, and with force and 
enthusiasm. When the final record is made in this movement, I 
am inclined to think that the balance of credit will go to the 
editor, and perhaps to the country editor. 

The necessity for this mastering of elementary"^ 
The Baton ^^|. fundamental problems delayed the launching of' 
ouge ^^^ campaign in Louisiana until April loth. On ., 

that day at Baton Rouge, the capital of the State, a \ 
conference was held, presided over by the Governor, the Hon. i 
W. W. Heard, and attended by the leading representatives of all / 
the educational interests of the State, forty-seven delegates in / 
number. No important educational interest in the State was/ 
omitted, A Central Educational Committee was formed. A 
declaration was issued to the people setting forth in earnest, simple 
and effective speech the great problem of democracy. This declar- 
ation has been printed in all newspapers and will be put into the 
hands of every thoughtful citizen. An address was made by the 
Governor of the State of singular wisdom and sympathy, and by 
others whose words carry weight. 

28 



. An Executive Committee was appointed, con- 

Effected sisting of Governor Heard, State Superintendent J. 

B. Calhoun, Dr. E. A. Alderman, President Thomas 
D. Boyd, Louisiana State University, and President B, C. Cald- 
well, State Normal School, charged with the details and execution 
. of the work. Four leading committees were organized, touching the 
three great forces that are constantly and perhaps most effectively 
at work upon human society — a Committee on the Press, a Com- 
mittee on .the Pulpit, and a Committee on Woman's Clubs; and a 
Committee on Local Campaigns. There will be another Com- 
mittee on Parish Boards of Education. This Executive Committee 
has not yet had time to work out nicely the details of the cam- 
paign that shall be waged in this and other states, but I may say 
this much : the State is being divided into Educational Districts, 
corresponding roughly to the Congressional Districts. Each of 
these is to have its great rally, wherein the whole great subject 
may be brought before the people. In addition to that agency 
there is held each year in every parish a Parish Institute, which 
shall be made the center of educational enthusiasm and enlighten- 
ment, as it has been in the past. The parishes are to be asked to 
secure the services in their own local fields of some earnest, ener- 
getic man whose business it shall be to ascertain and stimulate 
public sentiment looking toward the submitting of the question of 
better school facilities to public vote. The Committee on Local 
Campaigns has for its duty the ascertaining and submitting to the 
Central Committee the names of all communities ripe for educa- 
tional effort and on the point of being ready to make investment 
in education through local taxation, which is the root-idea in this 
whole matter. As soon as these reports are received, it is the 
purpose of this committee to send to such communities whatever 
aid may be necessary to carry through their fight for better schools. 
This is the first step. 

The second step is the selection of certain typical communities, 
not too far advanced, not too far behind, but mellow and ripe, and 
to concentrate effort in them in order that they may stand as 
nuclei and examples to other communities. 

The third step will be the selection of communities and the 
application to them of methods employed with such skill and 

29 



ability by my colleague and friend, Dr. Mclver, and by my dear 
old associates and companions in North Carolina at Greensboro, 
for that meeting involved one distinct principle in this new edu- 
cational propaganda. 

Louisiana is rich potentially in educational lead- 
Louisiana ership. There are brave, earnest men who have 
th^ Work Riven much to the cause. The field is inviting many 
strong men who display willingness to spend them- 
selves for the cause of public schools. In the simple belief that 
education is an investment and not an expenditure ; in simple faith 
in the productive power of training, I know of no state that excels 
Louisiana. It has not as many leaders, but the bulk of its popu- 
lation regards taxation with less aversion than almost any com- 
munity that I have known. I think they have learned this lesson 
by the necessity of a levee tax to protect them from the inroads of 
the Mississippi ; and they somehow make the subtle connection of 
thought that their children need just as much protection from the 
submerging flood of ignorance. The old leaders there have plowed 
the ground well and deserve all the credit for this favorable state 
of the public mind. 

In the last twelve months, particularly since the formation of 
this Board and the beginning of this work, three parishes, twenty- 
six wards (corresponding to townships), nine towns, and seven- 
teen school districts have added to their educational facilities by 
special taxation ; and in the last two years, fifteen parishes, eleven 
towns, and over one hundred school districts have availed them- 
selves of this opportunity of citizenship. The idea of the Southern 
Education Board was something new to them, but they believe in 
its sincerity, its good sense, and are allied for the promotion of 
its purposes from the Governor of the State and the Superintend- 
ent of Public Instruction to the simplest public school teacher 
in the remotest school district. The Governor of the State and 
the State Superintendent bade me present their sincere regrets 
that they could not be here to-day and to assure this Conference 
of their hearty support and interest. The Governor, I may say 
without violating any confidence, declared to me that it was his 
purpose to recommend larger appropriations for public schools to 
the greatest extent consistent with other needs of the State, and 
to urge in all ways the vital principle of local taxation. 

30 



Educational legislation is particularly broad and unhampered 
in Louisiana. One-fourth of the property-holders can bring the 
matter to a vote. We hope to see established in every district 
some public-spirited man or woman who will make it his or her 
duty to get together this public-spirited one-fourth element of 
the population. It is interesting to state that women holding 
property may vote in such elections, and I am counting hopefully 
upon their united efforts in this crusade for higher efficiency. 

The summer months are the months when the best results can 
be obtained in Louisiana, and our machinery will be in perfect 
form by that time. All of the educational organizations of the 
State, the State Teachers' Association, and the District Associa- 
tions are issuing their addresses to the people and undertaking 
their tasks in this campaign, and our Executive Committee is to 
become the executive arm of all these organizations. 

We hear a srreat deal about the condition of 
The Progress affairs in the South on the debit side of the ledger. 
ty^ ^^ Perhaps we are not quite fair in boldly stating what 

the present condition is. Perhaps the truest form of 
statement is a comparative statement over a decade. I, therefore, 
submit the following statement of affairs in the City of New 
Orleans, taken from an attractive circular issued by the school 
board of New Orleans and to be had at the desk. By the way, I 
believe it is true that no American city has known such beneficent 
activity as the City of New Orleans. It is the home of John 
McDonogh, that strange, sad man, who equipped and erected 
thirty school-houses in New Orleans at a cost of a million dollars. 
Just before I left the city a meeting was held to give a cup to the 
citizen who had performed the most splendid and conspicuous 
civic act of the year — a good custom for our other cities in the 
South — and the cup was given to Mr. Frank T. Howard, who built 
as a gift to the children of the city a splendid primary school- 
house, costing $45,000. 

The policy of the New Orleans School Board during the last 
ten years has been to promote and extend facilities for elementary 
instruction, particularly primary. The following data, stating con- 
ditions in 1890 and 1902, will show results : 



31 



WHITE SCHOOLS, 189O. 

Number of Elementary Schools 37 

Number of Grammar Grades log 

Number of Primary Grades, including Kindergartens 208 

Number of Kindergartens 6 

Number of Pupils in Elementary Grades 16,426 

Number of Teachers in Elementary Grades 327 

Annual Pay-roll of Elementary Teachers, nine months $154,800.00 

Average Number of Pupils per Teacher 50 

Average Cost per Pupil per annum $9-43 

WHITE SCHOOLS, I902. 

Number of Elementary Schools 55 

Number of Grammar Grades 179 

Number of Primary Grades, including Kindergartens 404 

Number of Kindergartens 18 

Number of Pupils in Elementary Grades 24,108 

Number of Teachers in Elementary Grades 576 

Number of Pupils in Grammar Grades 5,9o6 

Number of Pupils in Primary Grades 18,202 

Number of Pupils in Kindergarten Grades 886 

Number of Departments in Elementary Grades 548 

Percentage of Pupils in Grammar Grades 24 

Percentage of Pupils in Primary Grades "jd 

Annual Pay-roll of Elementary Schools, nine months $310,500.00 

Average Number of Pupils per Teacher 41 

Average Cost per annum per Pupil $12.80 

INCREASE in Number of White Schools since 1890 18 

Containing Departments 180 

Enlargement of Buildings, Creating New Departments 52 

Number of Departments having Half-Day Classes for Lower 

Grades to accommodate the masses 22 

Total Number of New Departments 244 

Increase in Teaching Expanse of Elementary Schools since 

1890 $155,710.00 

Cost of Establishing, Constructing and Equipping New Schools 

and Departments since 1890 $491,000.00 

Increase in Number of Pupils since 1890, (47 per cent) 7,682 

COLORED SCHOOLS, I9O2. 

Number of School Houses ii 

Cost of Building and Equipping $108,500.00 

Number of Departments 107 

Number of Pupils Enrolled 4,976 

Number of Teachers io6 

Pay-roll of Teachers Annually, nine months $56,800.00 

Average Number of Pupils per Teacher 47 

Average Cost per Pupil per annum $11.30 

32 



The Curriculum in colored schools is the same as that in white schools 
in equivalent grades. In 1900 the Board reorganized the colored schools 
and reduced the work to primary, and added the fifth grade, intending to 
simplify and strengthen the work in these schools. 

SUMMARY. 

Total Number of Pupils, White and Colored, in Elementary 

Schools, in 1902 29 084 

Total Number of Departments 655 

Total Expense of Teaching, nine months' term $367,300.00 

Average Cost per Pupil, White and Colored $12.05 

The legislature of the State is to convene at Baton Rouge on 
May 15th, and I dare to predict that something definite will come 
of that meeting in the line of educational progress. 

„.^ ^ , . It is my pleasure to report, what many of you 

The Work m , ^i ^ ^1 ^ . r t.^-- • • • . , , . 

Mississippi ^"^w, that the state of Mississippi appropriated this 

year, straight from the treasury, the sum of $2,500,- 
000 for the next two years' work in public education. I consider 
Mississippi a most promising field for the application of the prin- 
ciple of local taxation. It is distinctly a rural state, but it is a 
rural state of high intelligence, with the smallest illiteracy per- 
centage in the South, and with a splendid determination on the 
part of the people and the educational officers chosen by them. 

Permit me in conclusion to express my gratitude for the help- 
fulness, encouragement and strength of the teachers and citizens of 
the State in which I have worked, and for the confidence reposed 
in me by yourself and the gentlemen of this Board. 



33 



THE WORK IN VIRGINIA 

Report of H. B. FBISSELL, District Director of the Southern 
Education Board 

Mr. President: 

We of Virginia felt that there was need in our State for 
exactly the same work that was being carried on in North Caro- 
lina, Louisiana and Mississippi. And yet I might say, perhaps, 
that Virginia has done much more in the past for the cause of 
education than have these other states, but there seemed that much 
more remained to be done. 

First was it necessary to bring two of the best 

Aeents work of educational evangelization in the Old Do- 

minion. We decided upon two men who had gained 
great reputation for the work they had accomplished. One was 
Dr. Frazer, at the head of the State Normal College in Farm- 
ville, Virginia, and the other was the Hon. Henry St. George 
Tucker, of Lexington, Virginia. Both of these gentlemen declared 
their willingness to enter into this work, and 1 shall ask that they 
be allowed to give some report of the work that they have done, for 
they are the men who have been doing the work in Virginia, and 
I think you ought to hear from them. 

^ .,. . There are one or two things connected with the 

Position of , . TT r A 

the Governor ^^^^^ i" Virgmia that justify great expectations. A 

reference has been made to the Honorable Charles 

B. Aycock, Governor of North Carolina. I wish to state that we 

in Virginia have just such another Governor. Governor Montague 

met with this Committee at its first meeting in Richmond and 

expressed his entire willingness to co-operate in the work. He 

took the most unequivocal stand for public education, and in the 

strongest terms expressed the hope that the public schools shall 

l)e made free from politics, and that as far as possible the indus- 

34 



trial element be introduced into every school of the common- 
wealth. 

I desire to express my appreciation of the work 
Belp Ren- ^^^^ ^^ ^j^g pj-gss Qf Virginia. Some of the repre- 
dered by sentatives of that press are here this morning. I 

may allude to the Richmond Times, because it has 
done the work which is most important, it has opened its columns, 
giving broadsides every week, and joined its forces in co-opera- 
tion with our work. What has been true of The Times has been 
true more or less of the whole press of Virginia. 

I also desire to express my appreciation of the 

"Jf°^J^°* work of the Richmond Association of Virginia. 

the Women ^ , , , r • . i j- 

This IS composed very largely of promment ladies, 

who have taken up this work as Dr. Frazer and Dr. Tucker have 
taken it up, and have organized throughout all the State, design- 
ing to press forward this educational campaign. 

I think the men really doing this work ought to be heard 
from, and now I will ask Dr. Frazer to make his report. 



VIRGINIA'S EDUCATIONAL OUTLOOK 

EOBERT FRAZER, of Warrenton, Va., Field Agent of the Southern 

Education Board 

; The initial aim of the work in Virginia was to get a fair 
understanding of conditions affecting public schools, especially 
those in the country. With a view to this I have visited about 
seventy schools, in fifteen counties, in different sections of the 

State. 

Peculiar difficulties confront a movement for 
Difficulties i^g^^gj. schools in Virginia. There is, at first, a wide- 
*° ® spread feeling of indifference even among intelligent 

people. It is extremely rare to find a person, not in 
some way connected with the schools, who has ever taken the 
pains to visit one of them. In response to many inquiries I have 
found less than a half dozen in all my travels. And it is by no 
means uncommon to find men of intelligence and influence who are 
out and out opposed to free pubHc education for all the people. 

35 



With a small but influential class opposed to them and the people 
at large indifferent, the work of bettering the schools becomes an 
undertaking of no ordinary weight. 

Another difficulty, and possibly a greater, lies in the undue 
multiplicity of schools and their consequent weakness. To find 
three or four schools where a single one would meet all reasonable 
demands is quite a common occurrence. I know of cases where a 
still greater number of schools might be conveniently consoli- 
dated : in several neighborhoods, six ; in one, seven ; and in an- 
other, nine. 

Another source of weakness lies in the inefficiency of our 
teachers. It would be hard to overstate the gravity of the situa- 
tion in this particular. An intelligent farmer, whose county has 
advantages for equipping schools far above the average, says 
there are six schools within three miles of his door, and yet he is 
unwilling that his children should attend any one of them, not- 
withstanding that he can ill afford to resort to a pay school. I 
recently visited a neighborhood where, in a radius of about one 
mile, there are three public and three private schools. Similar 
cases are lamentably abundant. 

In the interest of an organized movement among educators 

for freeing our schools from the various hindrances that beset 

them, and devising steps for better things, I have seen prominent 

officials in all the leading institutions of learning in the State. 

Without exception they have given assurance of their interest in 

the movement and of their readiness to work for its success. We 

hope to effect this organization in the early part of the summer 

vacation. 

The State owns and supports two normal 
Normal _j . 

Schools schools : one at Farmville for white women, and one 

at Petersburg for negroes, this latter being co-edu- 
cational. For white men it maintains a normal department in con- 
nection with the College of William and Mary. Annual state ap- 
propriations are made to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural 
Institute. The normal facilities thus furnished are utterly inade- 
quate to our needs. At the recent session of the Legislature the 
appointment of a committee was secured to look into the estab- 
lishment of an additional normal school for women, with provision 

36 



for manual training. This committee is to make its report at the 
coming session of the General Assembly. Efforts will be made to 
see that the committee is thoroughly furnished for a favorable 
report. 

The practical end to which the Virginia agents 
Consolida- ^f ^^^ Southern Education Board are first address- 
Schools '^^^ themselves is the grouping, in conspicuous cen- 
ters, of several schools into a single well-equipped 
institution to serve as a sort of object lesson, setting forth the 
power and value of a genuinely good school. The plan includes 
in each case a school garden and manual training. A number of 
communities are already at earnest work for the establishment, 
through local effort, of schools of this character. 

It is gratifying to be able to report a most encouraging spirit 
of responsiveness among the people wherever we go. They are 
becoming aroused to the importance of the educational question, 
and before long we hope to have a mighty cry for better schools. 
Our work is also receiving the cordial endorsement of religious 
bodies, and the pastors of churches are giving us hearty co-opera- 
tion. 



37 



THE WORK OF THE BUREAU OF THE 
SOUTHERN EDUCATION BOARD 

Keport of CHARLES W. DABNEY, Director of the Bureau of the 
Southern Educatiou Board, Knoxville, Tenn. 

Mr. President: 

The Bureau of Investis^ation and Information was organized 
in pursuance of the resolution at the last meeting of this Con- 
ference authorizing the Board "to conduct a Bureau of informa- 
tion and advice on legislation and school organization" to aid in 
carrying on "a campaign of education for free schools for all the 
people, by supplying literature to the newspapers and periodical 
press and by participation in educational meetings and by general 
correspondence." 

The Bureau is located at Knoxville, Tenn., under the direc- 
tion of Dr. Charles W. Dabney ; the chief is Professor P. P. Clax- 
ton, and Professor J. D. Eggleston, Jr., is the secretary and editor. 
It commenced its work on February i, 1902. 

As its name indicates, its activities are of two 
AnEduca- ^:^^^^. 

. „ ' I. The investigation of the actual conditions 

of the public schools, normal schools, industrial 
schools and other institutions having relation thereto. The whole 
social problem of the Southern people comes within the scope of 
this Bureau, but for the present its chief activity will be limited to 
the investigation of the country schools of the South. The unit of 
public education in the Southern States is the county. For this 
reason the county systems of education are being systematically 
studied, especially their condition as regards school-houses, equip- 
ment, teachers, supervision, enrollment and attendance, the work 
done in the schools, finances and local taxation. 

The Bureau is making a systematic study of the Southern 
population, both white and colored, as to illiteracy. Statistics 

38 



illustrating the condition of the public schools in the different 
states are compiled as fast as reliable data can be obtained, and 
comparison with those of others in the country will be made. 

II. The Bureau undertakes also to supply information on 
these subjects and on matters of school organization and legisla- 
tion. It advises with regard to methods of consolidating the 
'schools and increasing local taxation for their support through 
publication of bulletins, circulars and newspaper notes, seeking to 
inform the people of the South on all these matters, and through 
an extensive correspondence it gives advice with regard to a mul- 
titude of subjects connected with the schools. Pursuant to this 
object the Bureau has nearly completed, by the aid of Dr. G. S. 
Dickerman, a careful study of the population of every county in 
the South as quoted at the last census, with regard to illiteracy. 
Some of the results of these studies are presented on the charts 
exhibited by this Bureau in this hall. The detailed facts will be 
published in an early bulletin. They show a very sad condition of 
things in many portions of the South, and a comparison of neigh- 
boring counties in the same state shows how complex the problem 
is, and that the methods to be pursued in improving this condition 
will have to be somewhat different in every county. 

The study of the general educational conditions in the 
counties is fairly complete in ten or a dozen counties in the states 
of Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee, and for a few counties 
in South Carolina. Some of the results are published in a bulle- 
tin submitted to this meeting, entitled "Educational Conditions in 
the Southern Appalachian Region," to which your attention is 
directed. Another bulletin approaching completion will compare 
educational conditions in the Southern States with those of other 
States in the Union. 

The Bureau has done a considerable amount of preparatory 
work, such as collecting educational reports and papers from all 
of the Southern States, counties, cities, and also those represent- 
ing the various educational associations and institutions. This 
material is being catalogued and arranged. It has collected and 
classified addresses of superintendents, principals, teachers, mem- 
bers of societies and citizens generally, who are interested in this; 
work. 

39 



The serial publications of the Bureau will con- 
Sureau . , , 

Publications ^^^'^ ' 

I. The Bulletins, which carry the more im- 
portant reports and discussions. 

2. The Circulars, which will be campaign documents, for 
use in the different states. 

3. Southern Education Notes, a bi-weekly publication, de- 
signed for the Southern newspaper editor's hook, aimed to supply 
facts, news and discussions for the promotion of our campaign in 
the public press. It has been very kindly received, and articles 
and notes are being most extensively used by the daily as well 
as the weekly papers. 

The first number of the circular explained the origin and pur- 
pose of the Southern Education Board. A special edition of 5,000 
copies of this, with a letter to the school officers of Virginia, has 
been distributed in that state. Ten thousand copies of the general 
circular without this letter have been distributed in other portiocis 
of the South. 

A second number of this circular, entitled "Thomas Jefferson 
on Public Education," is being distributed at this time. The first 
number of the bulletin, entitled "Educational Conditions in the 
Southern Appalachian Region," is presented to you at this meet- 
ing, and will be distributed immediately. 

All members of the Conference are respectfully invited to 
examine the exhibit of the work of the Bureau made in this hall. 
The chief of the Bureau, Professor P. P. Claxton, will give a 
somewhat more detailed account of the work. 



THE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AND INFORMATION 

By P. P. CLAXTON, Chief of the Bureau 

It is the purpose of this Bureau to gather information in 
regard to schools and school systems in the South, to study their 
needs, and to offer suggestions for their improvement. The his- 
tory of education in other states of the Union and in other coun- 
tries will be studied for the sake of finding, if possible, what is 

40 



best for us to do in order to assure the broadest and fullest devel- 
opment of our educational systems. 

The great problem in the South is the education of the children 
who live in the country and who must be educated in the rural 
public schools, or in none. The strength of the South is in its 
rural population, where it must remain for many generations. 
' The hope of the future is the boys who hoe the cotton and plow 
the corn and milk the cows, and their sisters who care for the 
country homes. For this reason the rural schools will be our 
principal study. 

As indicated in our formal report, our publications are to be^ 
of three kinds: Southern Education Notes, for the use of the 
press; a monthly circular, for general distribution among those 
who are actively interested in the work of school improvement; 
and a series of bulletins, which will contain the results of original 
study and investigation. 

Two or three of these bulletins are now in prep- 

Bulletins ^^^tion and will be published this fall. Probably 
Will Contain ^^^ "^^^ ^° ^^ published will attempt to show in 
some detail just what is now done for the edu- 
cation of the children of this section from the kindergarten and 
primary school to the university and technical or professional 
school. Later bulletins will contain the results of studies of the 
rural schools, school support, the preparation of teachers, second- 
ary education, school gardens and school farms, the education of 
colored children, consolidation of schools, school houses, etc. It 
is our purpose to print five or six thousand copies of each of 
these. Like all other publications of the Bureau, they will be 
mailed without charge to all who are interested in this work, and 
will promise to read them. 

We expect to make a thorough study of the question of the 
education of children in mill towns. This is already one of the 
most difficult problems we have, and it is becoming more impor- 
tant every year. I know a mill town with a school population of 
more than nine hundred and an average daily attendance of less 
than one hundred and fifty at its eight months public school. 
There is no other school in the town. In the mills of this town I 
have seen boys and girls not yet nine years old working at mid- 
41 



night. In the Carolinas and Georgia there is already a large mill 
population, and it is increasing very rapidly. If we would avoid 
the mistakes made by older manufacturing sections, we must 
study the problem carefully and act promptly. 

The question of the rural high school deserves careful study 
also. The time has come when a good high school education is as 
necessary for the farmer, the mechanic and the machinist, as was 
the ability to read and write a hundred years ago. Scientific 
agriculture requires a knowledge of agricultural chemistry. The 
intelligent and profitable use of modern machinery requires an 
accurate knowledge of elementary physics and mechanics. 

It is not the purpose of this Bureau to become 
The Purpose a school of pedagogy, but we do hope to do some- 
of the Bureau thing toward getting into our schools courses of 
study that shall bear a closer relation to modern 
life, and methods of teaching less wasteful of the child's time and 
of our meagre school funds. 

We who are connected with the Bureau have our hearts in 
the work, and we hope to contribute our part to the solution of 
the many perplexing problems which confront us, and to help 
in hastening the day when every boy and girl in the Southern 
States shall be redeemed from ignorance, when there shall no 
longer be a "forgotten man" or a neglected child among us. There 
is no safety except in universal salvation, and for this must we 
all labor. 



42 



POPULAR EDUCATION AS THE PRIMARY 
POLICY OF THE SOUTH 

By the Honorable HOKE SMITH, of Atlanta, Ga. 

THIS convention gathers here, with educators from all over 
the Union and with big-hearted, patriotic philanthropists 
from Eastern States, to confer upon what to us is the most 
important of subjects — Education. Education is important every- 
where, but it is especially an important subject with us because 
so necessary and yet surrounded with so many difficulties. 

A great son of Pennsylvania declared that this 
Material jg ^ section upon which the Almighty has with lav- 

ji^x. o i.x. ish hand bestowed His richest material gifts. The 
of the South => 

three great raw materials necessary for the develop- 
ment of the manufacturing interests are lavishly found with us. 
They are iron, lumber and cotton, and we have ample coal and 
water power with which to handle them. Coal — the coal of the 
South is larger in quantity than that of Russia, Germany, Bel- 
gium, France and Great Britain combined. We have water power 
in limitless quantities. The price of pig-iron in Alabama today 
fixes the price of pig-iron the world over, the standing timber of 
the South is one-half that of the Union, and we raise seventy 
per cent, of the lint cotton that goes to the manufacturers of the 
world. 

This is nothing new, it has been the condition 
The Need ^^j. ^ century, and yet what have we done ? We 
_ ,,. are away behind in the development of industrial 

enterprise. The little state of Massachusetts, with 
her barren hills and with scarcely any resources but her granite, 
has shipped iron from Lake Michigan, lumber from the West, 
cotton from the South and coal from Pennsylvania, and has sent 
her manufactured products throughout the world. While Massa- 
chusetts has furnished her manufactured products of our own 

43 



raw material to us, doubled in price by the skilled mechanics of 
Massachusetts, we have been lagging behind in the march of in- 
dustrial progress. Why? Not because our people lacked the 
natural ability. The earliest settlers of western North Carolina 
and South Carolina and Tennessee displayed a genius for handling 
iron and manufacturing cotton. The story is a simple one. I 
turn back the pages of history but that we may be prepared to 
emblazon their pages in the future. We gave our time to raising 
slaves and to the single industry of agriculture, while Massa- 
chusetts trained the minds of her children. 

The work to which I call you today is an earnest, devoted, 
consecrated work. It is our work, work for us of the South. We 
hold our hand out to you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for com- 
ing among us, but we say to you that we would be unworthy your 
coming did we for one moment hesitate to tell you that the educa- 
tion of all the children of the South is our work, and by God's help 
we mean to bear it. And we mean to carry it on until every child 
within the borders of the South, white and black, shall have a 
thorough education. 

And while we think of our unwise conduct in 
^^® _ the past let us not be entirely discouraged. Already 

the light is beginning to shine. Take the single ex- 
Awakemng ° & o o 

ample of the cotton industry as an illustration. The 
cotton manufacturing of the South has increased in the last twenty 
years one thousand per cent., and last year we built more mills 
than all the mills we had twenty years ago. Already tech- 
nological institutions are being established throughout the South, 
and more than two thousand of our boys are today being 
trained in them to develop the resources of our beloved section. 
To these institutions we pledge our loyal support. For them we, 
the people, will demand from those who represent us a liberal con- 
tribution from our taxes. 

In every city and every town where public schools have been 
established let us not be content to simply teach the "three Rs" ; 
let us see to it that manual training and domestic science, properly 
taught, shall help to fit our children for the struggle of life. 

Let us whenever we are able, while we thank our friends 
from abroad for helping such worthy work, let us of the South, 

44 



if we have a few dollars to spare in addition to what we pay for 
taxes, let us give it with a free heart to so noble a work in behalf 
of our children. 

But, as you have been told, the rural school 
The Problem question is the great problem. Between eight-ninths 
S^h^^l"^^^ and eight-tenths of our people live in the country, 
and yet not one-third of our agricultural lands are 
today being tilled, and that one-third not tilled one-third as well 
as they should be. What an opportunity for development is of- 
fered here, what a field for natural growth opens to our people, 
what riches are in store for our section when old Mother Earth 
receives the proper culture from her sons and daughters ! What 
blessings can be carried to these people of the rural sections when 
first-class schools are furnished to all of them ! 

The sparsity of the population, bringing with it an enormous 
increase of expense, is the most serious problem connected with 
our rural schools. Let me illustrate our difficulties as compared 
to those of Massachusetts by calling attention to the differences of 
our condition in this regard: Massachusetts has eight thousand 
square miles of territory; Georgia (I take Georgia by way of 
illustration because of being so much more familiar with my own 
State) Georgia has fifty-eight thousand square miles. The peo- 
ple of Massachusetts are worth five times as much per capita as 
the people of Georgia. The population of Massachusetts is four 
hundred thousand larger than Georgia, yet we have two hundred 
thousand more children. Thank God, we are not without our 
blessings ! Blessed is the man whose quiver is well filled. Massa- 
chusetts can build a school to every square mile and have sixty- 
five children to put in it. Georgia to every square mile has eleven 
children, and of these six are white and five are black. This re- 
quires two separate schools. Yes, separate schools for whites and 
blacks, and this question with us is settled. We decline even to 
discuss it. It is with us a sacred question. Back of it we will lay 
down our lives. 

But, my fellow-citizens, when I concede the 

°° disparity of means among our people as compared 

and After **"* °^^ co-patriots of Massachusetts, I do not mean 

to disparage the natural resources of our section. 

45 



In i860 the wealth of the Union amounted to eleven billions of 
dollars, and the South had five billions and two hundred millions 
of that amount. The war came with its devastation, and after the 
war conditions I do not care to discuss. We lost three hundred 
millions in wealth between 1870 and 1880; 1880 found us two 
billion and four hundred millions worse off than we were twenty 
years before. But conditions righted themselves. An all-wise 
Providence watched over us. We never lost hope, and today we 
would be absolutely inexcusable if we had any doubt about the 
future. 

Our people are burdened with taxes and this is one of the 
hindrances to our progress in raising money for our schools. By 
a peculiar device between 1868 and 1870, large bonded indebted- 
nesses were created, the fruits of which we have never seen as a 
blessing to our own people, the interest on which we continue to 
pay. I speak this historically. I speak it that we may not be dis- 
couraged at our own poverty, that we may not be discouraged 
with our past record, that we may consider our present conditions 
in view of the past and may turn our faces to the sunlight of the 
future, each man and, above all, each woman, determined to con- 
tribute a full part. 

\71iat With the improvement of conditions we have 

Georgia Has not been altogether nesrlectful of the education of 
Done for our children. We have not done what I would have 

Education j^^^j ^^^^ people do, but we have done much. In 1871 
Georgia appropriated $175,000 to popular education; in 1901 
Georgia appropriated $1,500,000 to popular education. In 1871 
two cities in- the state of Georgia supplemented the state appro- 
priation with local taxation for the support of their schools, and 
today I can shake hands with the Governor of North Carolina 
and say that there is not an incorporated village in Georgia 
worthy of the name that does not supplement the state funds with 
local taxation and run schools during eight months in the year. 
A number of our counties have levied a local tax to supplement 
the state appropriation so that their schools also may be conducted 
eight months in the vear. 

It is impossible to have a thorough system of schools in the 
country until we run them eight months during the year. I for 

46 



one, call upon you, my fellow-citizens, I call upon you, friends 
from other parts of the State, to go to your homes with a deter- 
mined purpose to arouse your people until all the political leaders 
become as devoted to public education as the Governor of North 
Carolina. If I had a chance to vote for a member of the Legisla- 
ture, a member of the House or a member of the Senate, I would 
find out from him before I voted what he intended to do on the 
school question. If I had to vote for a candidate for Governor 
I would want to know first, "How do you stand about the educa- 
tion of the children of Georgia? Are you going to waste your 
time in office studying some great national problem that you have 
nothing to do with? Are you going to disturb your mind about 
the condition of Cuba and the Philippines, or will you seek to 
handle subjects within your reach and develop the power of 
the children of the State ?" Oh, my brethren, how easily we for- 
get what is around us and wander off after something we have 
nothing to do with! My fellow-citizens, my countrymen of the 
South, you are to blame as well as your representatives. If you 
will take proper interest in the schools of the State, if you show 
a real zeal for the education of the children, the public treasury 
will open and the schools will never be without funds. 

Our rural school question is fraught with serious difficulties. 
We have not sufficient schools, we have not sufficiently good 
schools. The problem as to whether the number is to be increased 
is a local problem. A general rule cannot be adopted for the entire 
State — it is one to be worked out at the particular place by the 
local authorities. 

We have another difficulty — our bad roads. A sparse popu- 
lation makes bad roads, and there is the difficulty of reaching the 
schools after you establish them. 

I think that there is but one difficulty about 

^^® our teachers. The day we pay them enough and 

Teacher's . • 

Salarv ^^^^ ^ year's work to them our schools will rapidly 

graduate them and fit them for the work, and they 

will seek it and do it well. You can find some patriots, some 

lovers of their fellow-men, who would go out and work in a 

country school five months for nothing, and do it faithfully, but 

the necessities of life preclude that a force of that class to the ex- 

47 



tent of from five to ten thousand could be organized in any state — 
no, not even in patriotic Massachusetts. The people of Massa- 
chusetts have shown wisdom by not trying such an experiment. 
They have had sense enough not to expect it. And whenever you 
feel that your child is not properly trained stop for a moment and 
consider whether the teacher has been properly paid. 

We must provide for eight months schools 

e e p an throughout the countrv. We must raise the money 
Philanthropy , *' .,',,,, ^ 

by state contribution and by local assessment. Better 

school-houses can be given, built partly by the people in the local- 
ity, but aid for their building furnishes a noble opportunity for 
those of us who have anything to spare. How much good can be 
done a locality struggling for a good school-house by saying, 
"You need two thousand dollars for your school; two or three 
of us will give one thousand dollars if you will raise the balance." 
We can make such contributions in Athens and in Atlanta, and 
with no feeling except of appreciation and self-respect the men 
and women in the less fortunate country districts can accept the 
assistance. With the same view I thank the gentlemen from 
the East for what they have done. It would be unmanly in 
me, if I have plenty to educate my children, to allow the most 
philanthropic to aid me, but we know there are thousands who 
have not the means, and the burden has thus fallen heavily on 
the rest. 

_ Ninety-five per cent, of the taxes in the South 

The Negro 

Problem ^^^ P^^*-^ ^^ *^^^ white men. Over $100,000,000 has 

been spent by the South for the education of 
negroes. The white men have been in control in every State 
throughout the South, and yet, after paying the school taxes, they 
have with equal justice distributed it to black and white. Do not 
misunderstand me. We are not entitled to a particle of praise for 
it; I simply mention it to show the burden we have carried and 
how we have acted. Could we be so blind, we in the Southern 
section, as to wish fully half of our population to grow up in ig- 
norance? But education does not apply to the mind alone; it is 
the leading forth of the child, in mind and character, to nobler 
service. 

Are we so blind that we would be willing to leave nearly half 

48 



of our population groveling in darkness, mentally and morally, 
and hope to surround ourselves by the light ? You may say there 
was a time during slavery when there was no danger, but, my 
fellow-citizens, you cannot apply the rule to the conditions to-day. 
vSlavery does not exist — thank God for it ! The negroes are free, 
independent men and women, and unless their minds and char- 
acters are lifted upwards, the danger is that they may rapidly go 
backwards. I am not prepared to condemn the original institu- 
tion except as to the injury it did us. I have had some experience 
for three and a half years undertaking to manage a half-savage 
race, and I believe the only speedy road to civilization is by sub- 
jugation, and it may have been a part in the plan of the Almighty 
that the negro should have the benefit of slavery to civilize him. 
If so, it was our burden, and we carried it. Be that as it may, we 
brought them, here, they did not come of their own accord. They 
are not going away, and we don't want them to go away. 

Then what are we going to do about them? As intelligent 
and Christian character pervades the men and women of our sec- 
tion they will become unanimous in favor of educating the mind 
and heart of the negro children as well as the mind and the heart 
of the white children. 

The Poor But, Oh, my fellow-citizens, the sense of duty is 

White not necessary to warm the heart to the white chil- 

dren; they are blood of our blood and bone of our bone. They 
are descended from long lines of patriots through the most genu- 
inely American stock in the American imion. They are brave to 
a fault, they are generous and noble in their instincts, they are 
moved by a patriotic devotion to their country, and nowhere in all 
this land can be found a race of people more absolutely devoted to 
the "faith" than our people in the rural sections. What a people 
to build a citizenship on ! What grander characteristics could be 
required as the basic foundation of a people to be led forth into 
mental strength and moral force ! How many from them we may 
hope will come who could grace the Senate like Ben Hill, or the 
Bench like Logan E. Bleckley, or delight us with their genius like 
Joel Chandler Harris, all three of whom came from the simple 
rural walks of life. 



49 



My fellow-citizens, we must have more schools. 

More Schools y^^ must raise all we can by taxation, and where we 
and More ... . , . 

Teachers have anything to spare of our own we must deem it 

a privilege to give it. It is not so much the lack of 

interest on the part of our country people, it is discouragement on 

account of the situation which confronts them. 

When we go out amongst them and help them build a school- 
house or when we help them by supplementing the teacher's sal- 
ary so that the school can keep open eight months in the year, 
or send them libraries to instruct and delight, we are doing the 
Master's service. 

We must have more teachers and better teachers. But it is 
suggested that it will take such an age to graduate them at the 
Normal School of our State and that we must not rely upon it 
alone. We must give to it — to that institution, than which I 
recognize none in Georgia is more entitled to the loyal support of 
every true man and good woman — we must give to it the funds it 
needs to advance its work. But the opportunity does not stop 
there. There are high-schools in Georgia where with a little help 
the graduates can be taught in normal work and fitted for school 
service. When we have any spare funds that we are ready to 
distribute let us go to such schools and pick out girls who are 
willing to pledge themselves, like our students at West Point and 
the naval academies, to a term of service as teachers, and let us 
furnish them with the means to complete an education, allowing 
them to return the gift by going out into the country and teaching 
the children of Georgia. From our high schools and city schools 
there are graduates who, with a little help and encouragement, 
would be willing to devote a number of years of their lives to such 
work. Are we to carelessly think of our own affairs and in self- 
ishness sit down quietly while these children are growing up in 
ignorance without our help ? Or are we to embrace the opportunity 
and enjoy the privilege of aiding in this work? With the neces- 
sary funds a thousand teachers could be graduated in twelve 
months in each southern state fairly well equipped and with earn- 
est hearts and minds on fire to go with a missionary spirit to the 
children of the rural section to lead them onward and upward. 



50 




eq 



a. 





^ 



u 



> 



This is a great work. Part of it can be done 
A work i^y popular taxation, part of it can be done by those 

cration °^ ^^^ tven here who are wilHng to deny ourselves 

unnecessary luxuries that we may enjoy the blessed 
privilege of reaching down and helping our brethren. Can we tire 
of such a work ? As well might the angel that stands at Heaven's 
gate tire of his task, though each time he swings the gate ajar 
another soul is ushered into Paradise ! 

Oh, my fellow-citizens, this is not a subject for idle speaking, 
it is no subject for mere enjoyment. I believe that the men and 
the women before me have a spirit which moves them, as when in 
their church work they seek to serve their Master. 

I call upon the organization of the women of Georgia to help, 
and I want to say that from no part of our people can such inspira- 
tion and service and moving power come as from you women of 
Georgia. The men are busy in their stores and in their offices. 
Pray with them when they come home at night to use part of what 
they make to help educate the children, and lead them by your 
influence and inspiration never to fail at the ballot-box to demand 
popular education for the children of our State. 

It is taught us that we must train the child in the way he 
should go if in mature years much is to be expected of him. Our 
forefathers, those earlier patriots, were earnest in their religious 
views ; they believed in the old doctrine that we are our brothers' 
keepers. In our organic laws they stamped the doctrine of 
human rights. If we are to be true to the faith and teachings of 
our ancestors, if we are to obey the spirit of our organic law, we 
must train the children of both colors, leading them, through eight 
months of schooling yearly, to their minds' highest possible accom- 
plishment. 

I thank you gentlemen for what you are doing to help. I 
pray God that we may do our duty. May He, in His infinite 
strength, give us power, and in His infinite wisdom point to us the 
wav. 



51 



EDUCATION AND THE VOLUNTARY TAX 

By C. B. AYCOCK, Governor of North Carolina 

IT is an easy thing to come here to these great meetings of the 
cultured and learned and be entertained, but the real work 
of this Conference is to be done in the rural districts, where 
you have got to go to the people because the people will not 
come to you. When a man is hungry he will come to you for 
bread, but, unfortunately, ignorance differs from hunger. If a 
man is hungry he comes and says, "I want bread," but we have 
to go and insist that the ignorant shall be educated. 

Some of our people here have said that the peo- 
Taxation P^^ ^^^ afraid of taxes. They are, and they ought 

to be. There never has been a battle fought for 
English and American liberty and won that has not been fought 
along the line of taxation. Taxation is a dangerous power and 
the people ought to say at every point when and how they shall be 
taxed. The taxation about which we fought was taxation that was 
spent by a king in ostentation and oppression and the people 
learned that to keep themselves from being oppressed they must 
keep the purse-strings ; but the taxation that goes for the up- 
building of the public schools is the very freedom and liberty of 
the people. 

Let us not complain of the sensitiveness of our people upon 
the subject of taxation, for it is ingrained and beats with their 
blood. What we want is to leave off discussion and get the 
strength and benefit that comes from community of action. We 
want local taxation, for the States are poor and they are proud — I 
believe they say the two go together. We are proud, and, poor as 
we are, eager and anxious as we are to uplift our people, we 
recognize that it would not uplift us if some kind-hearted people 
came along to pay for our instruction. Education means some 
self-sacrifice to achieve the higher and better things. I want to 

52 



say to our distinguished friends while in conference here together 
that I count it far more gain to the cause of education that we meet 
together as brethren and discuss these matters than the gift of all 
the millions which they could pour into this work. 

Eighty-two per cent, of the population of my State dwell in 
the country. I have quit talking to the towns of our State — I 
go straight to the country, and I desire to impress it upon you that 
your workers should go to the country and stimulate the people 
to vote for local taxes for the public schools and help them in 
every way until the rural districts shall regain what they have 
lost and become what they used to be — the strongest part of this 
Southland of ours. 

The national government is about to appro- 
tating^Flood ^^^^^^ ^""^^ ^°^ *^ preservation of the Appalachian 
of Ignorance foi'ests because it is necessary to prevent floods from 
sweeping down and devastating the country. I say 
that the flood of ignorance that is sweeping down will destroy us 
unless we strengthen the people here at home and avert that flood 
which threatens our rural districts. 

These people have in them the same blood that flows in your 
veins and the same Revolutionary ancestry, the same blood that 
was left by the bleeding feet of their ancestors at Valley Forge, 
the blood of the men who followed Stonewall Jackson and Robert 
E. Lee ; they have in them the blood of the gallant men who fol- 
lowed with Pickett and Pettigrew up the heights at Gettysburg to 
meet men as brave as themselves. All they need is to see the 
truth, and when they have seen it, they will take up the fight 
against illiteracy and carry it on. 

The Cry of ^^^. °^ ^^^ ^°^*^' ^^^ ^^ ^^^ South, women of 

the Children ^°*^ sections, why sit we here idle when the strug- 
gle calls us to the fight? In those days of '6i to '6$ 
what were you doing? In all of this splendid Southland of ours 
there was the sound of marching troops and the martial drum- 
beat, and the tears of our women watered the land. They gave up 
all they had, they sacrificed every dollar, everything of value ; they 
laid aside the things which belonged to the life of luxury and re- 
finement and the circumstances under which they had been bom 
and reared and took up the labors of the field and of the factory— 

53 



and we sent more men to the front than we had voters in the 
State. What were we fighting for ? Men of the North, you said 
you were fighting for the Union, fighting to free the slaves. Men 
of the South, we of the South were fighting to assert our inde- 
pendence. Only the very old men were left here to enjoy that 
independence, and women's hearts were breaking while the men 
were offering their lives for their cause. You were fighting for 
your children. If you gave in war the lives of your men and the 
destruction of your homes, now that the Union has been pre- 
served, and the negro has been freed, and we have achieved a 
more glorious independence in the South than we have ever be- 
fore enjoyed, what hinders it that we sacrifice the time and money 
that is necessary to build up the rural schools in these States ? 

God give us patience and strength that we may work to 
build up schools that shall be as lights shining throughout the 
land — ten, fifty, a thousand candle-power. Behind this movement 
for the education of the children of our land there stands the One 
who said, "Let there be light." 



54 



THE CHILD AND THE STATE 

By EDWIN A, ALDERMAN, President of Tulane University 

Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Conference: 

THERE have been many moments in recent years when all 
Americans have felt the reality of our restored Union. 
There came such a moment last summer when the good 
President lay dying and when, somehow, there entered into the 
dullest spirit of the land a sense of love of country and pride of 
race and intimations of immortality ; but I believe that this assem- 
bly is the largest event in the direction of rational American unity 
which has occurred in this generation. This is an assembly of 
the representatives of all classes of educational institutions and 
educational forces. Heads of great Universities that once sat 
apart in Olympic isolation are here, and humble school-teachers, 
clad in new robes of civic usefulness and civic self-respect. Men 
and women of the North and of the South are here with their 
memories swept clean of all bitterness and misunderstanding; 
men of affairs of the North and South are gathered here with 
constructive purpose in their minds, with willingness to com- 
promise, to readjust old view-points, to shed old prejudices and 
reconstruct new theories, and above all to covenant highly with 
themselves that this educational crusade shall, not cease until every 
child in this nation, high or low, white or black, bond or free, 
shall be emancipated from the great, black empire of ignorance 
and of night. 

These friends of ours are not here as critics or 
missionaries, but as serious-minded citizens who per- 
p . . ,. ceive the difficulty and the majesty of Republican 

citizenship, who really love their country through- 
out all its length, and who count it the glory of good citizenship to 
seek to translate ideals into institutions. In some wiser and gentler 
age men will write the names of such men upon arches, and will 

55 



raise monuments to their memories. And surely ^ve of this South- 
ern land, who have taught the whole world a lesson in self- 
reliance, are not here as passive alms-takers. We bear great 
burdens. We have borne them not unworthily. We shall con- 
tinue to bear them in our determined fight to readjust our section 
to the modern world, and to enter completely into the national life 
of the Republic which our fathers helped to build, but it is a 
tonic to the heart and the will to find friends, I may say brothers, 
from all over America who understand and who are strong in 
courage and in sympathy and in faith. 

If I had a boy and wanted to teach him good, straight, honest, 
vivid patriotism, I would not much care to carry him to a battle- 
field where men had shed blood and torn at each other's throats, 
but I would rather wish to bring him to such a place as this, 
where he might see the play of human sympathy and human pur- 
pose at its very best, where he might see men and women of 
strength and power, unafraid of changing their views, unashamed 
of honest emotion, informed with iron purpose and touched, as 
I have never before seen a body of citizens, with the moral and 
political value of childhood and of the meaning to the nation of 
the dim, toiling thousands who dwell untaught in the shadows 
of the world. 

I believe that Democracy is the highest expression yet evolved 
of the governmental purpose of men. I believe that the nicest 
and most difficult task of a Democracy is the education of all the 
people. This supreme task is especially difficult in a rural democ- 
racy. It is still more difficult in a rural democracy where there 
are two races which must be forever educated apart. It is still 
more difficult in a rural, bi-racial democracy but yesterday sub- 
merged by war and invasion, and just freeing itself from the 
stunting inheritance of grinding days of poverty in which small 
means were used to forward great ends. This is our great task — 
and I think we may well thank God that we are here and are alive 
and have stomach for the fight. 

Puljlic Fifteen years ago, those of us who were then 

Education battling for a proper educational system often heard 
and Public such statements as these masquerading as serious 
Opinion arguments. I mention them for their archaic value, 

56 



for they no longer hinder or obstruct: How far has the State 
a right to educate its own children? As if it were not the chief 
business of a State to educate its children as far as it pleased. 
Will not the public school make the children of the Republic 
Godless ? As if anything could be gained by keeping the children 
.ignorant in order to keep them good. Can we afford to educate ? 
As if it were not better to spend money to make men, than it is 
to sacrifice children to save money. Is it not dangerous to educate 
the masses? As if anybody knew who the masses were and as 
if the nation had not dug its most flashing jewels from that mine 
that the thoughtless call the masses. The mustiness and harm- 
lessness of these arguments to-day mark the growth of the public 
intelligence and the sweep of public vision during these fifteen 
years. 

Much more serious was the lack of educational leadership 
in that pioneer period. The teacher had not then come to be a 
social force, the philosopher and friend of legislators and poli- 
ticians miraculously turned statesmen. The teacher was an 
ansemic and blameless personality who was set apart to teach the 
unteachable, to govern the ungovernable, to reform the incorrigible 
and to parse the unparsable. He was not thought a fit one to step 
out in the open and take part in the great, thrilling, rough work 
of making freemen in a democratic society. The statesmen of 
the day spent their time discussing drearily the dismal trinity of 
the tariff, the currency and the fear of negro domination, and upon 
these altars the best brain and blood of twenty years of Southern 
manhood were offered. I have seen in my life that splendid 
miracle we call the birth of public opinion. I have seen it arise 
humbly and simply and timidly in a few hearts and minds. Pub- 
lic opinion is the resultant of the search after truth and its dis- 
covery by the great mass of people. The individual begins his 
quest earnestly, humbly, simply, and one day he finds it with 
gladness at his heart. The masses in their search may be fright- 
ened by noise and the truth sought may retire into covers and cor- 
ners, but its volume grows until it becomes vast and serious and 
solemn and resistless as the movements of winds and tides. 

Public opinion demanding adequate school facilities for all 
the children has come to exist as a mighty conviction, and there 

57 



is no man so brave or foolhardy, who values his political life, who 
dares to stand flat-footed and declare himself unfavorable to the 
development of the public schools in these Southern States. In- 
deed, the up-to-date Southern governor, instead of spreading 
abroad assorted misinformation about the currency, is an educa- 
tional expert, and upon a pinch could conduct a teachers' institute. 
The South has reached three fundamental con- 
Three elusions. It has decided first that no civilization can 
rundamental 

Conclusions ^^^"^ ^^^^^ ^" poverty, any more than a man can 
grow and work when he is hungry. They have, 
therefore, decided that they must know about machinery, the or- 
ganization of industry, and the application of the sciences to the 
useful arts. They have learned the trick of industrial power, or 
rather re-learned it, for their grandfathers knew it. You had 
but to look, my friends, at that long line of cotton factories flaunt- 
ing their smoky banners to the skies, to know that the agricul- 
tural South had become the industrial South. We have enrolled 
ourselves among the industrial democracies of the world and 
sleepy little towns that once indulged in hot talk about "states'" 
rights" and "squatter sovereignty" are now busy sending salable 
products to the four quarters of the globe. 

/' The second fundamental conclusion of the South is that pub- 
lic education is an investment and not an expenditure and that, 
therefore, common schools for both races must be everywhere 
established and maintained in order that the productive power 
of the community may be heightened, that the standard of con- 
duct, happiness and intelligence may be raised, and opportunity 
given to discover the precious "lad of parts" whose spark of genius 
may be kindled into leadership for the great affairs of the world. 
The South sees, as it has never done before, the spiritual and 
political value of childhood. Every awakening among men has 
been marked by a turning toward childhood for the realization of 
its hopes and dreams. The awakening South sees childhood as 
the French saw it, aghast at the havoc and fury of the Revolution, 
as the Germans saw it, crushed under the iron heel of Napoleon, 
as the French saw it again amid the ruins of the Third Empire. 
The going of a Southern boy or girl to college is not an ordinary- 
incident of adolescence. It is most frequently the result of a su- 

58 



preme sacrifice. They throng these halls to-day, but far away in 
some simple home their fathers and mothers are lying awake in 
the still hours taking counsel together how they may work a little 
harder and rest a little less, how they may save here and scrimp 
there, how they may deny themselves the coarser joys of life that 
^ this child of theirs, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, may 
be lifted up into some larger life where the air is fresher and the 
waters sweeter, and the vision wider. And these boys are stronger 
for this tutelage of self-sacrifice. Hardship seems easier to them, 
self-denial gleams fairer to them, opportunity shines gentler for 
them, duty looms grander before their eyes and without doubt 
and without boasting, I trust, they are the noblest potential citi- 
zenship in this American Republic. 

The third great conviction of the South centers around a 
change in the conception of the State. I can remember myself 
when the State was looked upon as a sort of machine for the pro- 
tection of life and property, and its highest and holiest duties 
were symbolized by justice and penal laws, by the hangman's rope 
or the policeman's club. But the change has come. To-day the 
State is the collective will of the people expressing itself in laws 
and mstitutions. The State has a brain, a heart, a conscience 
and a will. No false and crude individualism stays its mighty 
hand, but it is informed rather with that large individualism 
which has a tender eye out for the children of the commonwealth 
(for the grown folks are usually past saving) and which has a 
resolute purpose to make out of them for their own sake and for 
the State's sake everything that can be made. 

Taxation a "*^"^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ remain two great forces that we 

Tribute to ^^^^^ have to fight in order to achieve the permanent 
Civilization ^^^ beautiful self-realization of our section. Gov- 
ernor Aycock and Doctor Mclver spoke to-day of 
the tax-hater as a foe to progress. Taxation is the involuntary 
tribute which civilized men pay for their share of the common 
good. Taxation may not be for the common good. Then it is a 
curse, and its use tyranny and the breeding of war and revolution. 
When it is used wisely and sanely it is the greatest beneficent con- 
trivance of civilization to achieve high public ends. Men, there- 



59 



fore, should simply watch its use and not blindly hate it as savages 
do who deny themselves civilization in order to escape it. 

When I came into this world i have every reason to believe 
that I was a small, reddish object, with no discernible rights and 
with no gold spoon in my mouth that I can remember. If I was 
nourished and protected and cared for, and taught and led into the 
ways of life gently, it was not because I owed it to any merit of 
my own, but it was due to the constitution of human society which 
I found when I got here, and this structure of society was built up 
by the toil and blood and self-sacrifice of generations before my 
birth, without which my share of the good things of life would 
be a stone cave and a flint axe, and I would be a naked savage 
dancing in the moonlight. When my hour of strength comes and 
I am asked to do my share for the young hands that reach up into 
life, I ought to be ashamed to say no, but if I am not ashamed 
society ought to take hold of me rudely, if necessary, and make 
me do it. 

The second great difficulty gathers around the 
The Educa- education of the negro race. There is much con- 
the Negro fusion of thought here, and any contribution in the 
interest of clear thinking on this subject is of genuine 
value. The day of emotionalism and passion on this subject has 
passed. The negro race is a child race, backward in training and 
inferior in type to the race which surrounds it. The problem is to 
apply to this backward child race, slowly reaching up after the 
essentials of modern civilization, the agencies which will enable 
it to achieve real freedom and real usefulness. Freedom is an 
achievement, not a legacy. The free man is the man, white or 
black, who knows how to earn bread and clothes, who can sacri- 
fice the present joy for the future good, who perceives the value 
of property and the meaning of membership in society, and so 
slowly grows into possession of his highest inheritances, the politi- 
cal, the literary, the scientific treasures of the world. The negro 
must grow into this freedom, for he is an American citizen. The 
white man must help him to this growth. To emphasize his 
political rights is to put the emphasis in the wrong place, for, as a 
race, he is now unfit for political power. Socially, he must grow 
utterly distinct and separate from the white. He must make his 

60 



own society. This is not race prejudice. It is simply race con- 
sciousness, and his growth can proceed on no other hypothesis 
But there must be constant growth to real freedom, and the nation 
IS responsible. To leave him untaught is to act in an un-Ameri- 
can, un-Chnstian, immoral fashion. In saying this much I be- 
^ heve I have voiced the conviction of all thoughtful, earnest men 
and women in the Southern States. The real, practical question 
IS not shall the negro be educated? but how shall the negro be 
educated? We have spent thirty years experimenting on this 
question, but I believe we are at last on the right track. There 
IS historic fitness in the fact that the great schools at Hampton 
and Tuskegee have found the right clue and have set the nation 
on the right track. I have just come from Hampton. I saw a 
splendid spectacle there. I saw education conceived of as power 
applied to life. I saw men and women being trained to live their 
lives m this age. I saw common sense and good manners reign- 
ing supreme in the workshop, in the kitchen, in the class-room 
everywhere. I heard men and women of the negro race tell sim^ 

thL M ^ P"i 1° "'' ^" ^'^' ^^^^ K^"^P^°" had brought 
them. Hampton and Tuskegee have something to teach to the 
whole world in the way of training for freedom I ..c^.t^.^M 
race^ What we need is the splendid, human, common-sense spirit 
of these places in every school-house, white and black, in the land. 
When a negro learns to do well things that must be done, he will 
have no trouble about his economic status. I believe that if one 
hundred picked men of the South, leaders in different lines in 
Southern ife, would go in a body to Hampton and Tuskegee 

and irritation about negro education would cease. It would be a 
wise use of time and money. 

The Purpose , ^'''^' 1° conclude, let me say that this Board 
and Methods ^"^^""^ ^^^ ^^^^ of usefulness with a faith in the 
of the Board '^'''^^ earnestness of the Southern people based upon 
their achievements since 1865. This Board has no 
new plan to propose. It is conscious that the work it seeks to do 
IS no new thing, but it believes that by annexing its energies to 
he energies of those already at work, and by going stra|h to 
the people through the chosen representatives of the people with 



61 



straight, plain, earnest talk and substantial help, the people them- 
selves will make their schools fit for the education of their chil- 
dren. It is a question of informing the public mind, of stimulating 
the public will and pleading with the public conscience. The chil- 
dren of the Southern states have a right to as good training as 
the children of the other states in this wonderful democracy. 
Local taxation is the historic method by which advanced com- 
munities have secured for their children a nine months' school 
taught by a trained teacher in a good school-house. Therefore, 
this Board pins its faith to that method and its necessary appeal 
to the people. 

I want to say just one final word to these young 
A Word to college men here. Your grandfathers were men of 

„ ' serene spirit, of fire and strength and of such un- 
ern Youth ... . 

yieldmg faith m a theory of government that they 

were willing to die for it. Your fathers were men who found a 
prostrate, war-smitten land, and by the exercise of courage and 
steadiness of purpose, have transformed it into a land of waning 
intolerance, of industrial power and educational desire. And 
now it has come to you in the march of events to play the man. 
There is no particular moment of heroic achievement in this world. 
Building upon all that has gone before, it is your splendid oppor- 
tunity to set the cap-stone to all their strivings and to create a 
just and rational educational system for your section. There has 
been no such clear call to duty and to bravery, to courage and to 
strength, since Stein and Fichte called the sons of Germany to rally 
around the Fatherland, and to lead her, radiant and prosperous, 
into the family of nations. 

May I beg you to annex yourselves to this cause? The first 
vote I ever cast was for the public schools ; the first dollar I ever 
earned was in the public schools, and, as I look back to-day, no 
honor has come into my life, no joy has entered my soul, com- 
parable to the annexing of my life twenty years ago to this high 
service. These men of affairs will tell you that the satisfying 
thing in their lives is not what they can make, but what they can 
do, and how they can serve their fellow-men. You may fail in 
your own strength, but the great cause will never fail, but will 
go marching on and your souls will go marching on with it, and 
dignity and splendor and noble peace will come into your days. 

62 




h4 



'A 



h-r 



S 

en 

< 



CO-OPERATION IN EDUCATIONAL EFFORT 

By 'HAMILTON W. MABIE, Editor of the Outlook, ISTew York City 

WHEN a man is introduced as I have been by President 
Ogden, in words so generous, with an awakening of 
hopes which cannot possibly be fulfilled, he wishes he 
might prepare a form of introduction. I am going to commend 
to the chairman, whose admirable qualities as a presiding officer 
I have heard commended by all in attendance upon these meet- 
ings, an introduction made by the director of a musical festival. 
He was introducing a violinist who was to play a selection, and 
he said: 

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have been asked to introduce Mr. 
Wilson, who will play a piece upon the violin. I have done so — 
and he will do so." 

Before I came here tonight I knew that I was unfortunate, 
because I had to return to New York tomorrow, but now I find 
myself following in the shining trail of Dr. Alderman, and I 
realize the depth of my misfortune. I am reminded of a negro 
preacher who offered up a prayer at a meeting at which there 
were to be four speakers. He proved that the Lord would touch 
with a coal of fire the tongue of the first speaker, that He would 
give His inspiration to the second speaker, that He would impart 
His spirit to the third speaker, and then he said: "O Lord, have 
mercy on the fourth speaker !" 

It is not upon the speaker, though, ladies and gentlemen, that 
we need, as a rule to invoke mercy — it is the audience. 

I am glad to say here how deeply I feel the sig- 
Occasion nificance of this occasion and of this work. I won- 

der if any of us realize that tonight we are wit- 
nessing not the birth, but the further development of one of the 
great popular movements of our time — one of those movements 
which shape and modify and change for the better the history of 

63 



the epoch. I have thought over the men and the institutions repre- 
sented here, and if the list were called, you would find the name 
of every state in the South represented. Here is Virginia, with 
her ancient college of William and Mary; her noble University, 
whose white columns shine tonight in the moonlight on her beau- 
tiful lawn; and Hampton Institute, one of the institutions which 
illustrate the truth that man is not born for education, but that 
education should be shaped to the needs of man. Here is North 
Carolina, represented from Durham and Chapel Hill and Greens- 
boro, which has become in recent years, by virtue of its enthusi- 
asm, a pillar of fire and of cloud. Here is South Carolina, repre- 
sented by Columbia and Spartanburg. Here is your own state 
and your own university, under its honored and beloved leader. 
Here is your Normal School, carrying its banner at the head of 
the column. Here is Kentucky, represented by Berea, where I 
saw the other day a group of young men who had walked from 
fifty to one hundred and fifty miles to go to college. Here is 
Tennessee, with representatives from Knoxville and Nashville, 
centers of light and leading these last years in educational service. 
Here is Louisiana, represented by the head of Tulane University, 
who brings his youth and eloquence and enthusiasm at the right 
psychological moment, and who has kept untarnished the fine 
traditions given him by that gallant and lamented gentleman, the 
son of Albert Sidney Johnston. Here also are representatives of 
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Maryland. 

Gentlemen, do you know what this means, and do you under- 
stand what you are doing? This is another renaissance, this is 
another new birth. I have felt the contagion of enthusiasm and 
caught the prophetic note in every speech, and believe that this is 
iust as great a time to live in as that time in the history of Europe 
when men forsook their vices and put on robes of scholarship and 
there went throughout western Europe the thrill of a new truth 
and the beginning of a new day. 

And do you know, gentlemen, what this means 
The Real jj^ ^^^ history of our country ? After the war there 

struction came the saddest of all sad times, the time of recon- 

struction — that policy which one of the noblest of 
men described as the building of a wooden bridge across a river of 

64 



fire. This is the beginning of the real reconstruction. Here now 

in the South itself are the people who must rebuild their own 

fortunes and build themselves into the nation in order that they 

may build the nation into a greater unity. Here in the South are 

laid the foundations of a reconstructed nation in the liberation of 

every man and woman and child in it from the ancient domination 

of ignorance. A great man said as he lay dying : "Place a sword 

on my coffin, for I was a soldier in the war for the liberation of 

humanity." This is the army for the liberation of humanity. 

These men are opening the doors of the future for the coming 

generations of Americans. 

I have recognized the happy choice which has 

e ecret brought this convention to this city. How has the 
of National r ^ • , . 

Greatness ^^^^^ °^ Georgia best served humanity? As nations 

and peoples and states always best serve it — not by 
the things they do with their hands, but by the things they do 
with their souls. No people were ever great yet that served the 
race primarily with its hands. Who cares for Carthage now? 
Every man cares for Athens and for Jerusalem, but no man 
cares for that pile of ruins on the southern shore of the Mediter- 
ranean, because the people there were workers with the hands. 
Every man in this audience is of a different mind because of what 
Athens was and what Jerusalem wrought. 

I have recalled the long list of those in this 
Gifted Sons S^^^^ State who have spoken to me. I am reminded 

that here in this University for a while was one of 
the purest and most beautiful lyric singers, Henry Timrod, I 
remembered that beautiful ode read at the dedication of the Con- 
federate cemetery in Charleston, one of the few immortal poems 
of the war. I remember Paul Hamilton Hayne, who, though of 
South Carolina, came here. 

I remember that this is the state of that noble-hearted man, 
Sidney Lanier. I remember that he was one of the first American 
poets who ceased to be a sectional poet and became a national 
poet. I remember that he saw the larger country and surveyed 
the wider horizon. I recall that dear old man, loved by everyone, 
and who reported your Georgia life with such rich humor — 
Richard Malcolm Johnson ; and I recall also the noble Grady, who 

65 



came just at the right moment and with the genius of oratory 
spoke the word of the hour; and I remember Joel Chandler 
Harris, one of the most original contributors to American litera- 
ture, one of the few whose work will live, because that work is 
the interpretation of a form of life already extinct. These are 
the men who speak for you to the country; these are the kind 
of men who are to be developed out of your population by the 
work of these gentlemen. 

It is a matter of personal grief to me that I 
The Nation's ... . 

Hero s cannot tomorrow join with you in the commemora- 

tion of your heroic dead, that I cannot stand here 
with bared head to do reverence to the heroic men you are to com- 
memorate. The Japanese have a custom that they call the feast of 
the lanterns, but which really is the feast of the dead. On every 
table food is placed, and the lamps are lighted on all the water 
courses, and back again to the places that they loved come troop- 
ing the dead, and are ministered to and made happy. 

We cannot recall our dead. They cannot come back to us, 
but they can live again in our remembrance. They can be honored 
by the way we discharge the duties they have left us. Your heroes 
are not the heroes of a section. Heroes are not the possession of 
any section or any circle of states. I claim your Stonewall Jack- 
son and your Robert E. Lee as heroes of the nation. 

Together on the field of Gettysburg the blue and the gray are 
commemorated and preserved ; together in the hearts of this nation 
the heroes of the South and the heroes of the North are to be 
kept in everlasting honor and remembrance. I look for the day 
when in the squares of northern cities will stand in bronze and 
marble the effigies of these heroes of yours, and when in your 
squares will stand the effigy of that great, sad man upon whom 
fell the awful task of ruling a dissevered household; and as we 
take off our hats to Lee and Jackson the time will come when 
you will take off your hats to the man that loved you — Abraham 
Lincoln. 
_. I have had a vision, as I have stood here, of this 

Vision of . , TV ^ r 1 

the Future great country m the great new age. Men of the 

South, warm-hearted and generous-minded, and 

men of the North, true-hearted and strong-minded, with the far- 

66 



reaching faith and plan; and the children of the great West, 
pouring through the schools and colleges and universities, with 
the light of the morning on their faces and immortal hope in their 
hearts. What a heritage! What a people! What an oppor- 
tunity ! 

You have had your great sorrows, and I can never read your 
story without a consciousness of collossal tragedy. Those sor- 
rows were the birth-pains of a great nation of the future, and the 
warmth of the South, the practical sagacity of the North and the 
far-reaching energy of the West, will combine to build the nation 
anew. To that great and new country let us dedicate ourselves — 
that country which is to be realized by the emancipation of every 
man born of woman who calls himself not Southerner, not West- 
erner, not Northerner, but that greatest of all names — an Ameri- 
can. 



^7 



EDUCATION THROUGH HANDICRAFT 

By CARLETON B. GIBSON, Superintendent of Schools, 
Columbus, 6a. 

I AM to talk to you this evening for something less than fifteen 
minutes very concretely upon an abstract subject stated on 
the program. I am not to tell you w^hat we should do in 
education, but to tell you the simple, plain story of what we are 
doing in a town in Georgia in the matter of industrial edu- 
cation for children of the working people. 

In this town of Columbus, which is a manufac- 
in Columbus during town, we have a factory population of several 
thousand souls. Of these people who work in the 
mills there are perhaps one thousand children whom we have not 
yet been able to bring into our public schools in the absence of any 
compulsory education law. The town of Columbus has always 
been liberal in the support of its schools. By the census of 1890 
the town had a population of very little more than seventeen thou- 
sand inhabitants, and by the last census it has a little less than 
eighteen thousand. With only a few hundred increase in popu- 
lation, therefore, the town has increased its expenditures for edu- 
cation more than fifty per cent. It has added to its already good 
course of the usual studies, manual training, domestic science, art 
and music, extended the high-school course, and through the gen- 
erous efforts of some noble women in the town it has three free 
kindergartens. In the enjoyment of these advantages the colored 
children share equally with the white children. 
An Effort But it was seen a short time ago that, with all 

to Beach these facilities, we were not reaching the class of 

the Factory children in the factory quarter of the town that 
should be reached, and through the generous aid of 
a very prominent member of this Conference and through the lib- 
erality of our City Council we were enabled to establish there 

68 




A Class in Manual Training 




A Class in Cooking — Primary Industrial School, Columbus, Ga. 



what is called a Primary Industrial School, a school that has very 
few text-books, few rules, no fixed course of study, no grades, and 
has three sessions a day, not for five months nor eight months 
only, but for twelve months of the year. 

In this school we have perhaps fifteen or twenty lines of 
handicraft. The children of the mill operatives are taken at the 
age of six or seven years and kept as long as we can keep them, 
which unfortunately is not longer than the age of twelve or four- 
teen. These children at the opening of this school in September 
crowded into the school eagerly because it was a new school. We 
had rented an old residence, the largest in the factory quarter of 
the town. We preferred to rent this old residence because it 
hadn't the appearance of the traditional school-house, and we 
wished to make this school rather a school home for the children 
of the factory operatives than a formal school. We had tried 
to bring these children into the ordinary graded schools, through 
personal visits of the teachers and considerable missionary work, 
but when any of them were induced to enter, as we had no com- 
pulsory education law, we were unable to hold them. These chil- 
dren of the inhabitants of the hovels of the factory quarter could 
not be held with their noses between the lids of books. 
Work of So in this new venture we discarded, to a great 

the Primary extent, text-books, and substituted a room fitted 
Industrial with tools and benches, where they might work at 
° manual training; a kitchen equipped and furnished, 

where the children might be taught cooking, and several other 
rooms each equipped for some lines of house-work. They are 
taught pottery, working in the clay which they themselves find in 
the hillsides near by, and which they bake, glaze, decorate and 
burn in their kiln. They are taught sewing, beginning with the 
simple kindergarten stitching and leading up to garment-making. 
Some of the girls, though under fourteen years of age, have this 
year been taught to make their own dresses. They are taught rug- 
weaving and the simplest form of loom-weaving, the children 
making their own looms in the manual training room. They are 
taught basketry, raffia, housekeeping, gardening, etc. 

The teachers live in the school-house, where the children can 
see something of a real home life, better and more uplifting than 

69 



their own home life. There are three teachers in the school. 
Every room is open to the inspection of the pupils. The pupils 
assemble prom.ptly in the morning without compulsion and begin 
their work joyfully. Some of them go to a model bedroom, 
where the girls learn the care of a bedroom, and these girls see 
something more attractive and beautiful than in their own homes. 
Some go into a dining-room and learn to serve a meal and to dress 
a table and care for china. Some go into the kitchen and see a 
meal prepared and have a part in the preparation, and they learn 
something of the best way to wash dishes, to sweep, to scour, and 
to laundry their clothing. 

When we first established this school, these 
^°°^® Httle children were the most uncivilized barbarians 

th s h 1 ^ ^^^^ ^^^' T^^y came to the school noisy and 
without any regard whatever for the teachers or the 
building. They came in not knowing what it was to take off their 
hats. Many of the boys came smoking cigarettes and some of the 
girls came barefooted with one frock, and that hardly fastened. 
They were a slovenly set, and did not know what it was to be 
prompt or to carry out commands promptly. I went to the school 
recently, and whereas for the first week or so they were very noisy 
in going out of the building, a few weeks ago I found them the 
most orderly and quiet set of pupils in the schools of Columbus. 
There is no compulsion, they are given a motive for everything 
they do. 

It may occur to some that we have neglected the literary work. 
Though they have no text-books, these children learn to read much 
more rapidly than children of ordinary graded schools. They 
learn board work much more rapidly. Whenever they have a 
bit of cloth to cut up in their sewing they have instruction in 
measurement, and calculate the number of yards of cloth for a 
certain number of articles. 

„^ „ ^ , In the rear of our lot one of the teachers, with 

The Scnool , . <• i • i i 

Garden boys and some of the girls, has started a school 

garden. The yard had never been used as a garden 
and the year before had been covered with bricks. The boys 
began to dig up these bricks and the little fellows, with the great- 
est joy, piled up their bricks and sold them to each other and used 

70 



school money which they themselves had made. This back yard of 
the school has in a short time been turned from a most unsightly 
place mto a place of beauty. The children have taken the keenest 
interest in the preparation of the soil, the selection of the seed 
and the planting of these seeds, and during the summer months 
(the session lasting through the morning hours only) they spend 
a great deal of their time there. ney spend 

The School ^^ ^^ proposed to carry this school on during the 

Term summer because we believe that as long as these 

f K .. /hildren are interested in their school work they are 

tTeel The /h 'f^' f" '' ^'^^ ^''' ^""^^^ -^ - ^^e 
stree s. The school has three sessions a day. The morning ses- 
sion lasts from 8 to 10:30 o'clock, then the children are dismissed 
in order to go to their homes, some of them to prepare the noon- 
day meals and all of them to carry dinner to'th'e fathers and 
brothers who work in the mills. The children must carry the 
dmner-pails to the older ones who work in the mill, and the school 

^ZV'^rr'l' ^° ^'^^ ^'^^ ^^" '^ ''■ ^^^y -turn at 
o clock and then there is another session from i o'clock to 3 -.o 

of the' rch^ool"" " ''' "'^^ " ''^ ''' ^"^"' *^ -^^^ --^- 

A Training '^^^^ ^^^ool has seemed to me to reach this 

for Life class of children and to interest and develop them as 

no other school I know of in our section of the 

country. It will not only reach and interest and develop them but 

hink our whole scheme of education ought to conform somewhat 

section, and we must make our education industrial. We must 

train w' TTT u ^'^ "^' '' "^" '' ^^^ ^^^ througrinu 
trainmg and lead them up to a thorough preparation for the 
making of their dailv bread. ^ f f ^^i tne 



71 



THE CHILD OF THE OPERATIVE 

By LAWTON B. EVANS, Superintendent of Schools, Augusta, Ga. 

IT seems to me that if there is one class of people that needs the 
influence of school more than another, it is the class that 
lives in the reek and wither of a cotton mill. 

If one child gets my sympathy more than another, it is the 
one with the pale and old-looking face and stoop shoulders, that 
indicates hard work in a hot mill, little food badly cooked, and 
insufficient sleep m a stuffy room. But of such there are many in 
the mill districts of the land, and they need our prayers. 

It does not need an array of statistics to bring to your notice 
the rapid and startling growth of the mill interests in the South. 
That fact is known and honored of all men. The whir of the 
Southern mill is the first note of an awakened industry. It is the 
overture of a diapason that shall make the mighty paean of a uni- 
versal peace. 

But with it comes its problems, social, educational and indus- 
trial. The factory class is distinct and pronounced, and its pecu- 
liar conditions bring peculiar temptations, and these demand pecu- 
liar powers of resistance. 

About ten years ago a great big mill was built 
H ^^^^^^ on the outskirts of our town. It was a "hummer." 
School About five hundred hands were set to work and for 

every hand at the loom there were two extra mouths 
at the home. Before the mill was in operation a great big bar- 
room was opened and many of the little mouths went unfed while 
the big bar took toll of the hands. 

I saw this would never do, so I set up a school, and the only 
place I could get for it was the vacant hall above the bar. A 
house-to-house canvass brought in about fifty children and the 
teacher in charge was one of the saints of the profession. While 
lessons were going on overhead, the clink of the glasses and the 

72 



shouts of the drinking could be heard below. Several times there 
was a big row down stairs. But the teacher sat steady and the 
school held on. It was bar-keeper and beer-glass versus school- 
teacher and reading-class. But we started out on top. 

Ours was a motley crowd, showing all the symptoms of 
neglect. Their faces were unwashed and their hair was un- 
combed. Their clothes were coarse, rarely clean, and guiltless of 
any effort toward adornment. They could with all conscience be 
called "tough." No wonder so, when but few of their parents 
could read and write, when they lived huddled together in small, 
unventilated rooms, when they arose at daybreak, ate a hastily 
and ill-cooked breakfast, put up a cold dinner, and ran on the 
streets when they did not come to school. It was as much as one's 
life was worth to pass that way in the dajlime, but at night it was 
risking to the point of foolhardiness. But that was the sort the 
public schools were sent to redeem. That was the sort a real 
teacher loves to spend herself upon. 

Growth of '^^^ ^^^^ following the school had outgrown 

the School ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ bar and a school-house of two 
rooms was built in a field near by. Two teachers 
were needed and a himdred children were gathered in. The year 
after that serious attention was directed to the needs of the com- 
munity and the two-room house was turned over to the negro 
school and a four-room house was built in a better place for the 
white children. The school grew to one hundred and fifty chil- 
dren. 

One day a young teacher came to me begging for work. She 
was willing to do anything for any price. I told her to go out to 
the factory, look up and down the streets and get thirty pupils to 
promise to go to school and when she had them let me know. She 
was of the right sort and in two days she had collected her school 
and I had her a room in the new house. Her thirty pupils grew 
to fifty. By this time we had two hundred pupils in the school. 

The community was also growing. There were churches, 
stores, houses to rent, and people were moving in on us fast. But 
it was not a school-loving crowd — far otherwise. However, we 
had to keep up with the times and so we added four rooms to our 
school-house. We sent four teachers out in the highways, one 

73 



after another, to seek for the lambs to bring them in, and they 
brought them in — poor little outcasts, who agreed mainly to try 
it awhile and stay as long as they liked it. Thank Heaven, most 
of them liked it and stuck. 

After six years the eight-room house grew to a fourteen-room 
house and the original fifty over the bar grew to six hundred in a 
comfortable school-house. The bar, however, is not any bigger 
than it was ten years ago. 

If you ask me what the school has done for 
of th S li 1 ^^^ children I will answer : It is not the purpose 
of the school to lift the children beyond work in the 
mill, but rather to supply in their lives that which the mill can 
never give them, and that is mental recreation in books and papers, 
the joys and comforts of a decent home life with all that it involves 
in the way of sewing, cooking and decorating. 

So long as ignorance and stupidity and dullness stand at the 
loom, and eat and sleep in filth, so long will disease and crime, and 
dissension and discontent riot with the lives and property of the 
people. 

The Hves of the mill people are cheerless and unimaginative, 
made so by the relentless click of the shuttle as it goes back and 
forth, beating down their brains and weaving into the cold, gray 
warp of their lives a filling of unutterable dullness. It is the mis- 
sion of the school to introduce a thread of gold. 

And this is what the school has done for the children. It has 
worked a regeneration in the lives of the boys and girls who have 
gone through it. There is no longer any fight over clean hands 
and cravats. Every boy comes up with his coat on, his shoes pol- 
ished, his collar and cravat in order, and his hair as slick as a wet 
seal. His manners have improved with his clothes and there is 
no longer that stubborn, surly, obstinate look we see in the op- 
pressed, but the open, frank face of the free. 

As we near the school we hear them sing and their voices 
are melodious and soft as they deliver the exquisite harmonies of 
some great composer. The morning devotions have now more to 
do with music, poetry and the Bible than with soap, water and 
towels. They have passed the physical and are well into the spir- 
itual stage of their progress. They have learned to love learning, 

74 



1 




m 




'^'^^^n^^hB^^^^^H^^^^^^H 


1 1 li^ ii*s 






1 




j 



'The only place we could get was the room over the bar." 

See "The Child of the Operative.' 




The Sckcoi. that Won the Fight. 

See "The Child of the Operati-je. 



and they read books rather than roam the streets. Their art they 
use at home. They have learned how to make the most of the hard 
Hfe that must necessarily forever environ them. 

When the evening glow brings out the people from their early 
supper and it is yet light and the door-steps are full, I have seen 
a breathless group listening to some story of love or adventure 
read aloud by a white-dressed, sweet-faced girl of ten or twelve, 
who had brought a book home from the school library. She was 
reading it to the old ones to whom it was otherwise a sealed vol- 
ume. Instead of leaving them to gossip or quarrel, the school had 
sent them a missionary who was doing the work of regeneration 
and not knowing it. 

And as the night falls and the crowds withdraw to their early 
rest, and the stars stand over the grim old school, that has won its 
ten years' battle, we stand by and think to ourselves, ''A little child 
shall lead them." 



75 



DEMOCRACY, THE AMERICAN IDEAL 

By FELIX ABLER, of New York City 

1WISH to beg^in by expressing my great gratitude to Mr. 
Ogden, who has arranged this wonderful journey for us, and 
to say, in particular, that of the many privileges I have 
enjoyed, I count it as one of the most precious to have been 
present at the celebration of the Memorial Day of the South- 
ern States and to learn on that occasion to what noble uses the 
painful and yet uplifting memories of the past may be put. I 
VvM?h lhp,t all my Northern friends could have been present; nay, 
I wish that it niipht be arranci^ed that you should send mission- 
aries to us, men lilce those u'hom we have heard at this Confer- 
ence, that they might coirc to our cities and tell us in their own 
way about the problems of ilio South. I am sure that they would 
receive a hearty welcome. Many misconceptions would be re- 
moved in this manner and the inward reconciliation of the differ- 
ent sections of our country would be greatly accelerated. 

I listened at Hampton Institute a few days ago, not without 
deep emotion, to the plantation songs of the negroes. One of 
them was : "There's a good time coming when we leave this 
world of trouble." I have been feeling ever since I attended 
this Conference that there's a good time coming before we leave 
this world of trouble. It will be not less a world of trouble in the 
future than in the past, but some of the darkest shadows of it are 
likely to be lifted in consequence of the work that has been done 
and will continue to be done at such meetings as these. I have 
been impressed by the sincerity that pervaded every utterance and 
it has seemed to me that from day to day, from session to session, 
we were helped to rise higher and higher until last night we 
ascended the golden staircases of Dr. Alderman's and Mr. Hamil- 
ton Mabie's speeches and reached to-day the commanding plat- 
form on which the statesmanlike address of Mr. Lamar placed us. 

76 




A Factory School. 
This is an upper grade some ten years ago, described in the article, 
"The Child of the OperatiA'e." It is one stage in the evolution of the 
school and the pupils. 




A Mountain School. 
This new school-house at Altamont, Mitchell County, N. C, stands 
within a few feet of the great divide between the Atlantic and the Gulf 
slopes. Governor Aycock, of North Carolina, stands directly in front of 
the door. 



I wish to occupy the few moments at my dis- 
The National pQg^j ^q gay just one or two words. We have heard 

Education ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ *^^^ ^^^ interests with which we had to 
deal in this Conference were chiefly economical. I 
may be pardoned for saying that to my mind they seem larger than 
-that — that they seem political, patriotic, ethical interests of the 
first magnitude. It was Alfred Fouilee who said in his book on 
education that every system of education must be national, i. e., 
adapted to the specific national needs of the people by whom it is 
adopted. Accepting this dictum we shall be led to the conclusion 
that Southern education, too, which we have here been discussing, 
must be adapted to our national needs, and must promote the high- 
est objects for which our country exists. It is not enough that it 
shall foster economic welfare, that it shall increase the wealth of 
the South and thus necessarily of the whole country, it is not 
enough that Southern education shall wipe out the blot of illiter- 
acy. All these things are desirable, all these aims must be borne 
in view, but in addition to and beyond them the highest standard 
must be applied, the highest American ideal must be subserved. 
And what is this highest American ideal, the stamp of which on 
any educational system in this country can alone make it truly 
national and hence truly satisfactory ? The highest ideal for which 
we as a people exist, it seems to me, is to work out the as yet un- 
solved problem of a true democracy. 

True democracy as yet nowhere exists, neither 
Democracv '^^ Switzerland, nor in France, nor in these United 
States. It has but begun to exist, and the ultimate 
realization of it depends on the fulfillment of two conditions, the 
first of which is that the best life shall be possible for every citizen. 
What are we to understand by the best life? A life of material 
abundance and ease and elegant enjoyments? Not so. The best 
life, at least as I understand it, is the sort of life which will make 
it possible for every person to do that sort of work for which he 
is best fitted, to win from himself the maximum result of power 
and usefulness. And the scheme of education which has been 
outlined at these meetings seems to me well calculated to develop 
in this ideal direction, inasmuch as it does not merely aim to in- 
crease the class of skilled artisans but also to sift out those who 
are fit to be artisans and farmers, and to open to them opportuni- 

77 



ties to do well their work in life, and hence to glory in it and to 
derive from it the highest spiritual as well as mental and physical 
benefits. 

And a second condition which a true democracy 
Aristocracy ^^^^ fulfill — in addition to the one just mentioned, 
viz., that everyone shall do the work for which he 
is best fitted — is that the best shall rule. What we need in this 
country is an aristocracy. There have been all sorts of aristoc- 
racies in this world — Greek, Venetian, English, etc. What we 
need in this country is a democratic aristocrary, one that shall not 
be founded on heredity but on merit; a plastic aristocracy, a 
house of aristocracy the gates of which shall be ever open, both 
those that lead into and those that lead out of it. Aristocracy is 
the rule of the best. What we need is that the best shall rule. 

„, And here I have wondered whether the South 

The South's ^ , , ^, , . , , , 

Contributiou ^^^^^^ "^^P "^- ^ here are some thmgs, doubtless, 
which you can learn from other sections of our 
common country, but there are also some exceedingly fine things 
which, I take it, we can learn from you. And in this connection 
I have in mind not only the graces of manner and the social 
charms which delight, not only the splendid fiery oratory kindling 
the heart and bewitching the fancy, of which we have had such 
admirable examples here, not only the absence of commercialism, 
which I think is still a happy and conspicuous trait in the Southern 
attitude toward life, but I have in mind especially the tradition 
of a democratic aristocracy which still lingers amongst your peo- 
ple and which, if it can be broadened and adapted to the new social 
conditions, may form a most valuable aid in developing the idea 
of democratic aristocracy throughout our land. What I have in 
mind is that the New South shall not merely follow along the 
path which the North has taken, shall not merely be a late learner 
and imitator of models set up elsewhere; but that the best traits 
of the Old South taking on a new form shall be incorporated as a 
priceless and lasting constituent in our national ideal. 
An Old And now permit me one word more, Mr. Chair- 

Myth with man. I have always had a lingering love for the old 
a New fairy tales — they are relics of an old, primeval world. 

Meaning ^^^ j hzve found much in their pretty symbolism 

that is capable of deeper meaning. 

78 



There is in particular one little fairy tale of which I am 
very fond — that in which we are told of an ardent young knight 
who set out on a hard and perilous quest. Stony paths must be 
trodden by him, a thorny hedge must be penetrated, monsters 
that barred the way must be slain before he could reach the 
enchanted palace and awaken the Sleeping Beauty from her 
dream. And I think that we of the North are engaged in a 
somewhat similar quest: we feel that there are stony paths to 
be trodden and difficulties to be overcome — yes, and Monsters 
of Prejudice to be slain, before we shall penetrate into the en- 
chanted and enchanting palace of your entire confidence, of your 
full and perfect trust. But no difficulties can deter us, for we are 
bound to reach you, in order that we may awaken, or at least help 
to awaken, the dormant and unique excellences that lie still partly 
hidden in the soul of the South and wed them in perpetual union 
to all that is best and strongest in ourselves. 



79 



c/l WORD TO AND FOR THE TEACHERS 

By JAMES E. BUSSELL, Dean of Teachers' College, Columbia 

University 

A FRIEND of mine remarked in my hearing the other day 
that he had been called upon to speak in a great many 
places once. Inasmuch as I may not be asked to pass this 
way again I want to speak a few words to the teachers tonight. 
The Eeac- ^^ ^^^> ^ think, in the beginning of one of the 

tion is the greatest educational movements that this country 
Teacher's has ever seen. I doubt if there has been anything 
Burden equal to it since the day, fifty years ago, when 

Horace Mann began his crusade in Massachusetts. But we 
teachers know well what the meaning of this is. We know that 
the enthusiasm engendered here will not last. We know that we 
must go back to our school-rooms and close the doors and take up 
our work anew. Then, in a measure, the world is shut out. We 
do not have the touch with our fellows that those in other profes- 
sions have. The lawyer is constantly coming up against his equal 
and if he makes a mistake he knows it. If the physician makes a 
mistake he has the relatives of his patient to reckon with. If the 
preacher makes a mistake he feels it in his congregation. If the 
business man makes a mistake he is buried before he wakes up. 
We teachers may be absorbed in our work and interested in what- 
ever we have to do, but the persons who are best qualified to 
criticise are in the next county or somewhere away from us, and 
we are left to carry the burden alone. Only those who know the 
isolation of the teacher's life, who understand what it means to 
be shut off from professional criticism and inspiration, can realize 
how great is the burden which the teacher bears. 

We teachers have received the message that has been given 
here with fear and trembling, not only because we realize our 
own infirmities and shortcomings, but also because we know there 

80 







O 



will be a reaction some of these days. We know that industrial 
education, no matter how extensively carried on, when put in the 
schools will not always be successful, and that the mere proxim.ity 
of a jack-knife and a piece of wood is not necessarily educative. 
No more is it educative than the chewing of a toothpick, unless 
there be something added to it. This manual training will fall 
as flat as any enterprise ever entered upon unless the teachers of 
this country put themselves to the task to do it well. 

And before leaving this point I want to say this : that I think 
that the teachers in the South and in the North will carry this 
burden as well as they may be able, and with the help of this 
Association and other associations that must be formed we shall 
go forward and, doing from day to day the best we can, shall 
finally work out some lasting achievement. 

How the There is an association in this State, the Geor- 

Reaction gia Federation of Women's Clubs, which deserves 

Must all credit for the work which it has inaugurated and 

be Met carried on so successfully in Georgia. That model 

school over in Danielsville is a beacon light. When the reaction 
comes, that school and others like it which will some day be estab- 
lished, are the schools to which we shall look and say : "Here you 
will find represented that for which we stand; you must not judge 
us and the work we do by that which the poorest do ; you must 
judge of our work by that which is done as it ought to be done, 
and if the public and these associations will help us we will see 
to it that similar work is put into every school that wants it and 
will support it." 

This, then, is the final word that I wish to say, and I want to 
pledge to this Association, I want to pledge to each State in the 
South, I want to pledge to the States in the North and West, the 
heartiest and most earnest co-operation of the teachers — the 
teachers in the little schools that work alone and in the dark, as 
well as teachers in the best schools, the teachers everywhere that 
are earnest in their work, anxious to succeed, devoted to the inter- 
ests of their children, and patriotic and loyal to a fault. 



8i 



"THE LARGER MEANING OF THE CONFERENCE 

By JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS, of Cambridge, Mass. 

THOUGH I belong to Massachusetts, I too have become an 
American. Really to see and to know one's country helps 
one into this larger citizenship. Thanks to Mr. Ogden, I 
have come three or four times into this charmed Southland of 
yours and always some new experience here gives me what I hope 
is a better patriotism. This time, as I stepped from the train at 
Richmond, I am glad that an impulse moved me to spend the two 
hours at my disposal in the great cemetery where 18,000 of your 
Confederate dead lie buried. I met there one of your scarred 
soldiers who had passed through the entire conflict. In conversa- 
tion with me he said : "I used to hate your Lincoln, but I have 
come to know about him and I see that we have had three great 
men, Washington, Lee and Lincoln." As I returned to our train 
I repeated those words, Washington, Lee, Lincoln, and the 
names seemed to me to stand for a new and completer unity of 
national life. 

Let me repeat to you what I said a few days 
® _ ago to a distinguished Frenchman who was visiting 

., _, educational institutions in this countrv. Monsieur 

than. Europe . ; ' 

Mabbilleau, the Director of the Musee Social in 
Paris. He asked me if I was going to Europe this summer. "No," 
I answered, "I am going on a much more interesting journey." 
"But what can be more interesting than Europe?" he asked. I 
said, "Mr. Ogden's trip through the Southern States has a fascin- 
ation that no European trip can equal." I then tried to describe 
the work to him, to tell him of the new faith and courage that we 
all derive from it. In this vast struggle to educate the democracy 
and to educate ourselves to believe in it, one needs above all 
things just the faith and courage which this Southern journey 
gives. 

82 



Thelnspir- It is a sorry truth that much of the so-called 

ing- Note in higher culture seems to find a sort of pleasure in 
this South- doubts and cynicism concerning the education of the 
ern "Work democracy. There is no cure for this disease like 
that of coming South to see what is now actually doing among 
whites and blacks in the way of democratic training. The positive 
and creative character of this Southern work, its newness, its dif- 
ficulties, yes, its very lack of material resources, all help to make 
it powerful against the blase indifference that too often accom- 
panies the traditional literary training. It is a delight to hear 
each year from some of the foremost Northern teachers how much 
genuine inspiration they get from these journeys. One of them 
said to me last year, "I get more here at Hampton and Tuskegee 
than from any other source," 

The Test An educational method can have no complete 

of an Edu- and adequate test until it has long and thorough ap- 
cational plication to those social groups which have the great- 

°^ est needs. This method, then, of industrial training 

that we are now applying to the negro, when it has been tried in 
the fire of this severe experience, will emerge all the fitter for the 
higher training too. To win achievements at the point of greatest 
difficulty is to win them more easily along the entire social line. 
These Southern journeyings help one to see and to feel these pos- 
sibilities. It is in this new seeing and feeling that one gets an 
added confidence in an education from which the democracy shall 
at last come forth strong and self-controlled. 

On the train between Boston and New York I met a citizen 
widely known among you and widely honored. He told me of a 
journey he had made to see that splendid citizen of your South, 
full of knightly chivalry, marking him as the kindly and perfect 
gentleman— Wade Hampton. After spending some days with 
him, and on his way to the station he met a darkey. I cannot 
imitate his speech, but my friend said to him: "Well, Sam," (it 
was after that crowd of carpet-baggers had been among you and 
you had had sense enough to clean the whole gang out) "Well, 
Sam, why have you put Wade Hampton in and turned the colored 
people out?" The darkey said: "Well, Massa, that's very simple, 
'cause you can't put ignorance top ob 'telligence and have it stay 

83 



dar." What pains is it not worth to get even a little of this evi- 
dence that "ignorance top ob 'telligence" is going to have a more 
and more slippery time of it ? 

Thus I justify what I said to our French visitor that this 
whole stirring movement of Southern education, including white 
and black alike, has a charm with which, for many of us, Europe 
cannot compete. 



84 



SIGNIFICANT UTTERANCES OF THE 
CONFERENCE 

THE IMPORT OF THE CONFBRBNCB TO THE NATION 

For the last three years, since first I began to know of the 
work of this Conference, I have looked upon its meetings from 
year to year as one of the greatest auguries for success in the 
line of education in the South. Not that the South lacked enter- 
prise and enthusiasm in educational matters, it had both; but it 
needed outside reinforcement and hence I have looked upon these 
meetings as the most effective way of giving auxiliary aid to 
educational work in the South. And this for the simple reason 
that the Conference has found the proper method of rendering 
assistance — a method of helping that develops self-help. For 
always the kind of help that does not lead to self-help is in the end 
an injury. The method of the Conference stimulates self-help, 
individuality and aspiration. 

Again, this Conference, in its effort to put the means of 
education within the reach of every child, white and black, in this 
Southern section, is doing an incalculable service for the nation in 
that it is increasing the number of individuals capable of directive 
power. For the education to be given in these elementary schools' 
of the South is the sort of an education that puts the individual 
in the way of growing and understanding, that shows him how 
to be active along the lines of the intellectual cleavage of the uni- 
verse, that converts him into the combination-making man. And 
with this ability to make new combinations comes the ability to 
learn new trades. Persons with a good elementary education 
can learn, generally speaking, a new trade in three weeks, whereas 
to learn this same trade the illiterate person would require seven 
years. 

Therefore it seems to me that everyone who loves his country 
and can take the far-reaching view must feel that this Conference 

85 



is doing more for the United States as a whole than any other 
one agency, because it is seeking to develop the directive powers 
of the individual and to furnish him with the ability to change 
his vocation, and when these ends shall have been accomplished 
we will have diversified our labor and enormously increased the 
nation's producing power. 

It is, then, precisely because this Conference is employing 
the right means to bring about these desired ends that the greatest 
of hopes are centered in it, so that, as I have said, the most 
important business in the United States for the North as well 
as for the South is the movement this Conference is leading. — 
William T. Harris^ United States Commissioner of Education. 



EDUCATION IN UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 

The highest expression of the God-like in man is the love 
and sympathy man is permitted to express to his neighbor. 

The neighborhood of this country is limited only by its 
boundaries. We are one people, with one mind and one heart. 

Education is not for a section, education is for America. 
Education for Massachusetts, for Indiana, for Georgia, for all the 
people — for what ? Is man educated for himself alone ? Do you 
live for self alone ? We are climbing to a leadership in the world. 
Let our education be not one of mind only, but the education also 
of the heart. May our leadership be based upon a broad spirit of 
humanity, upon the brotherhood of man. If we are to be great 
leaders, let us be broad enough and wise enough to take the small 
neighbor by the hand and lead him by intelligence and good inten- 
tion to nobler and higher things. Let us lead him forward. 

In this love of man for his neighbor is found the human ex- 
pression of the love of God toward us. For the love of man is 
the sure index of the love of God and the love of God and of 
liberty is the sure index of the possibility of a great, well-rounded, 
well-equipped American people. — Hugh H. Hanna, of Indiana. 



THE OUTLOOK IN TEXAS 
I shall not take up your time to recite the facts showing the 
progress that Texas has made in this matter of education. I 
realize that she has some unusual opportimities : that she now 

86 



spends on her common schools three and a half millions of dollars 
out of the general revenue and one million more from local taxa- 
tion ; that she gives to her University $350,000 a year and to the 
Agricultural and Mechanical College nearly as much ; that she has 
three white normal schools and one for negroes and an industrial 
school for girls — these things she has done excellently well, and 
these are but part of the showing. 

I, perhaps, am an extremist as to what a community may do 
and should do in providing for education. I am a firm believer 
in the proposition that the largest possible expenditure is the 
wisest possible economy, and if we are going to arouse our people 
to an appreciation of the situation we must approach them from 
that point of view. Every great statesman has accepted the propo- 
sition that education is the foundation of liberty, and we must 
today accept the proposition that it is the basis of wealth. If we 
approach it from the point of view of wages we see that wages 
depend upon training, and training can best be received through 
the institution that society has developed to promote that training 
— the public school. And, finally, we in the South need to con- 
form our theory of government to our everyday thinking and 
practice, and reject the proposition that the community which 
governs itself least governs best and substitute for it the propo- 
sition that the community is best governed which governs itself 
most. That state or commonwealth, then, enjoys the best govern- 
ment which most freely and liberally taxes itself for the support 
of its public schools. — President Houston of the Agricultural and 
Mechanical College of Texas. 



THB EDUCATION THAT LIBBRATHS 
When we began to believe that the education of the heart 
was as necessary as that of the mind, then we began to believe 
that the mind and hand working together harmoniously would 
quiet the conflict between capital and labor and harmonize con- 
flicting claims between East, West, North and South, and make 
each section a stronger factor in the nation's life. 

Everywhere we see the mind of the people turning toward 
industrial education and the training of those people who hereto- 
fore have been untrained, and everywhere educational institutions 

87 



are being established to meet this newly-felt need. We must have 
first of all leaders for this work, those who can guide intelligently, 
wisely and faithfully, and we need behind them the money neces- 
sary to carry it on. To all which work this Conference and the 
movement it represents will be an immense stimulus. 

In listening to these discussions I have been reminded of the 
words of the Master when He gave to His disciples the gospel of 
the new life and said, "Take this, go forth and preach it to the 
generations to come." The country is now waiting for the gospel 
of the new education, its messengers must go forth with the word. 
In every district along the marshes of the Gulf and the lowlands 
of the Mississippi — everywhere in our fair State of Louisiana — 
are boys and girls anxiously and earnestly thirsting for the truth 
that shall make them free. 

And in this connection I recall the story of the swan that had 
a nest beside the sea and the strange gosling came forth and they 
wondered that he was different from the others, and by and by a 
great bird came down from the mountains and touched the wings 
of what erstwhile was thought a gosling, and, lo ! it soared away 
to the mountain heights — a North American eagle. Mr. Presi- 
dent, everywhere in Louisiana there are boys and girls, lonely, 
athirst for light, needing only the touch of inspiring men to soar 
to the mountain heights of earnest, progressive, honest American 
citizenship. — President As-well of the Industrial Institute of the 
State of Louisiana. 

THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM OF THE SOUTH 
The common school should be the very best school that we 
have so far as it goes, instead of being the poorest school, as it is 
to-day in most of the Southern States. The majority of the people 
look to-day and must always look to that branch of the public 
school system for the preparation of their children for citizenship 
and for success in everyday life. 

I want to see established in every Southern State a common 
school system commensurate with the necessities of the people 
of the State, a system that will carry common school advantages, 
absolutely free of cost, to every child, both rich and poor, white 
and black, eight months in the year. 

88 



And when we get such schools I want to see laws enacted 
compelling every man to send his children to school at least four 
or six months in each year. If it is the duty of the State to take 
the place of the parent in the education of the children, the State 
must be given the power to perform that duty, because duty and 
power to perform it always go hand in hand. Under such a 
system as that the parent who loves his child and his State would 
send his child to school. The parent who does not love his chil- 
dren or his State sufficiently well to send his children to school 
ought to be made by the law to do it. 

The common school is, to-day, the weak point in Alabama's 
system of education. Within the past few years we have raised 
our school appropriations from $600,000 to $1,500,000. Alabama 
is appropriating for educational purposes fifty per cent, of all 
her revenues ; but while our higher institutions of learning run 
nine months of the year, the common schools run only five or 
six months. This ought not to be. Effort must now be con- 
centrated on upbuilding the schools of the people, for what the 
country needs above all things is that strength which would come 
from educated manhood and womanhood. We realize that what- 
ever virtue or good is desired in our national life the seeds of it 
must first be planted in the common schools of the country. — J. W. 
Abercrombie, State Superintendent of Public Instruction for Ala- 
bama. 

THB SOUTHS THRBB CLASSES 

Our difficulties in Alabama, as in the South generally, arise 
from the fact that we have three classes of people to deal with. 
We have the colored people, who have had as yet but a little over 
one generation of free opportunity; we have the uneducated 
people of our own race, among whom illiteracy seems to perpetu- 
ate itself, and we have the more intelligent class upon whom has 
largely devolved the administration of affairs. There has not 
always been, nor is there now, that genial and free-hearted sym- 
pathy and community of interests between these classes that should 
exist, but I am glad to say that we can see the dawn of a brighter 
day. 

The colored people are taking great interest in the matter of 

89 



education and are showing a capacity for improvement that was 
once denied them, and their educational leaders — be it said to 
their credit — are evincing a grasp of the situation and a magna- 
nimity of spirit that command admiration. 

The uneducated white people are a class that I feel the deepest 
sympathy for and the greatest interest in. They are of our own 
blood and race and are proving generally honest and generally 
virtuous. They are religious, but it is a religion that does not 
eliminate prejudice and hate. They are susceptible of the intens- 
est degree of patriotism, but their patriotism is narrow, hardly 
patriotism in the sense of state patriotism, certainly it does not 
reach to a national patriotism. This class of our people is the 
class that calls most loudly for help. 

A word in regard to the more intelligent class. They have 
inherited from the past ideas of individual independence. They 
have not always been convinced that taxation was a good thing, 
they have not always been in favor of public schools. This senti- 
ment has to be overcome and the remedy is to unite our people, 
to create in them a willingness to tax themselves for the good of 
the whole people and the whole country. 

Dr. Nicholas Alurray Butler, reviewing the educational situa- 
tion for the past year, says : "Education in the South turns largely 
upon the education of the colored people." This is true, Mr. 
President, but I want to supplement it by adding that it also 
turns largely upon the education of the uneducated white people. 
— Dr. John Massey of Tuskegee, Alabama. 



MISSISSIPPI'S INCREASING COLORED POPULATION 
We of Mississippi realize that while our percentage of illit- 
eracy may not be as great as that of some other Southern States, 
still we have to contend with difficulties of the most serious char- 
acter. Chief among these is our large colored population — a popu- 
lation that statistics show to be constantly on the increase. The 
census of 1890 gives South Carolina the greatest percentage of 
colored population ; but now, according to the last census, it is 
Mississippi that shows the largest proportion, the percentage of 
colored population being about sixty. 

The great burden of taxation falls, of course, upon the white 

90 



people of the State. We have been meeting the obligation of this 
burden, realizing that it was an obligation, and yet the indications 
are that the burden is going to become increasingly heavy to bear. 
The school fund, voted by the Legislature and raised by general 
taxation, is distributed in our State to the several counties in pro- 
portion to the number of children to be educated. From this has 
come a rem.arkable result, viz., that a few of the counties lying 
along the Mississippi, where the population is very dense — and it 
is a negro population — have had their school terms materially 
lengthened from the fact that they draw out from the state treas- 
ury more than they put into it, while on the other hand, the coun- 
ties in the central part of the State — which are largely populated 
by white people and where the lands are old, worn out and non- 
productive — receive from the state treasury less than they put in 
for public education. The only remedy for this state of affairs is 
local taxation, and to secure this we are directing our efforts. 
Several counties have already voted the local tax and thus materi- 
ally lengthened the school term. Of course we shall continue the 
contribution made to those counties where the population is largely 
negro. 

This large and increasing negro population is, as I have said, 
the gravest feature of the situation in Mississippi. But we are 
attempting to meet our difficulties as the other States in the South 
are meeting theirs. We of Mississippi are merely the sons of 
Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina and Virginia, 
and we are trying to meet these problems in the same spirit in 
which they are so nobly met in these older States. — Chancellor 
Robert B. Fulton of the University of Mississippi. 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION, THE HOPE OF THE SOUTH 
There is, it seems to me, most urgent need of insistence upon 
the real practical value of education as a powerful factor for the 
economic welfare of the community, elevating as it does the stand- 
ard of life, increasing invention, advancing wages and adding 
amazingly to the productiveness and material prosperity of the 
people. 

And to promote these ends so devoutly to be wished, every 
energy should be used toward developing in our schools a system 

91 



of sound and sane industrial education. In this connection the 
words of two well-known Englishmen seem well worth ponder- 
ing: Lord Brougham once said he hoped a time would come 
when every man in England would read Bacon ; William Cobbett 
said he would be contented if a time came when every man in 
England would eat bacon. First and foremost, a man has to earn 
his living, and the light we want is the light to help us to work, 
and find food and clothes and lodging for ourselves. And the 
three R's, if no industrial training go along with them, are apt, 
as Miss Nightingale observes, to produce a fourth R — the R of 
Rascality. 

Every boy born into the world should be put in the way of 
maintaining himself in honest independence. No education that 
does not make this its first aim is worth anything at all. The 
being able to do something is of infinitely more value than the abil- 
ity to answer questions. More and more is it coming to be seen that 
the industrial hope of the South is in a wider dissemination of 
scientific, technical and manual education, in making universal, so 
far as may be, that knowledge of the forces of mechanics that will 
lead to the development and mastery of the material resources that 
still lie slumbering in the depths of our hills and fields and forests 
— this is the supreme need of our impoverished Southland. 

And not only must we have this industrial skill at the top, 
we must have it all along the line. Not only do we need the 
expert Captain of Industry, but we need as well the trained 
man in the ranks, he too must have the disciplined intelligence 
that gives elasticity and alertness of mind which brings adapta- 
bility and power to get command of all new methods, new appli- 
ances and new labor-saving devices. It is this power, says our 
American Consul at Liverpool, that makes the average American 
two or three times more efficient than the average English work- 
man. 

It is no longer a question of debate or experimentation as to 
whether industrial education is the most practical and potent 
agency for the educational and economic development of the negro 
race. Certainly in our own State the justly famous Tuskegee 
Institute, and many smaller institutions established through its in- 
fluence, furnish incontestable proof of the wholesome, elevating in- 
fluence of this form of education upon the negro. 

92 



And equally desirable, I hold, is this industrial education for 
vast masses of our own white race. The trained hand and the 
trained eye our white children also must have, or gradually, but 
surely, will all forms of industrial occupation pass from their 
control. Again I say that the future development of the South 
depends upon industrial education. — Professor C. C. Thach of the 
'Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Auburn, Alabama. 



AN EDUCATIONAL QUARANTINE 
We had in Virginia a couple of years ago about 670,000 chil- 
dren of school age. Of that number we had about 450,000 en- 
rolled in the public schools, and of that number we had about 
220,000 who were actually in daily attendance on the schools — a 
potentiality of 670,000 and an actual daily attendance of 220,000. 
There is less than one-third of the school population of the State 
of Virginia in the schools for five months in the year. 

What will be the result of that in fifteen years? Oh, the 
man that has sent his child sits back and says, "That is dreadful, 
but you can't lay that to my door, my child is not in the wilderness, 
he is going to school, he is safe." 

Is he safe ? Safe ! Ladies and gentlemen, smallpox itself is 
not more contagious than ignorance. 

Here is a question in higher arithmetic that I will give you to 
think over: If one bad boy can destroy a whole neighborhood, 
how many can two-thirds of the neighborhood destroy? Or, if 
two-thirds of the community are in ignorance, where will the 
righteous third be? 

It is like the story of those two doctors — you remember the 
discussion between them as to whether smallpox was contagious 
or mfectious. It was a very learned discussion, and it had been 
going on for a long time. Finally they brought in an old brother, 
an old wool-hat fellow with a good heart and a sound head, and 
they agreed to leave it to him. 

After the old man had heard the arguments on both sides, 
he said : "I have heard your arguments and have given them that 
due consideration which the authors of them are entitled to, and 
I must say that I am not acquainted with those tv/o words you use 
—'contagious' and 'infectious'— but there is one thing I know 
about smallpox, and that is that the durned thing is ketchins" " 

93 



Now I don't care how the ignorant child is going to infect the 
neighborhood, whether by infection or contagion, but friends, you 
know and I know that "the durned thing is ketching." We are 
going to drive it out with a compulsory education law, we are 
going to vaccinate the children of the South and of the whole 
country with the virus of intelligence, and when that "takes," the 
scab may grow and it may hurt, but it is going to cure them of a 
worse disease. — Henry St. George Tucker, of Lexington, Va., 
Field Agent of the Southern Education Board. 



THE DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGE AND POPULAR 
EDUCATION 

Conditions are such in the Southern States as to make the 
denominational college a stronger factor in all that relates to 
popular education than it is in other parts of the Union. 

With all the recent industrial changes the South is still a 
collection of agricultural communities, and must remain so for 
many generations. Now in the country districts the denomina- 
tional sentiment is strong enough to determine the choice of a col- 
lege. What the result of this is, the latest report of the United 
States Commission of Education clearly shows : In the South 
Atlantic States 60 per cent, of the students in colleges and uni- 
versities are attending institutions controlled and supported by 
religious denominations ; in the South Central States the propor- 
tion is more than 70 per cent. 

The preponderating number of students in the denomina- 
tional colleges evidences, then, that the college is an effective ele- 
ment in popular education. It is this because it is the head of a 
church system that uses all its machinery for active and persistent 
educational propaganda, a propaganda which is becoming less 
and less colored with sectarianism, a propaganda which has noth- 
ing to do with church doctrine and all to do with the larger ques- 
tion of human betterment through education — popular education. 

We have no way of measuring the important results which 
must come from this bringing of the matter of education before 
the people with all the force and authority of the church. For 
not the least phase of the problem in the South is simply to get the 
question before the people, to enlighten them and to have them 

94 



think upon it. Among the masses there is a great inert, if not a 
positively hostile, force into which must be put the educational 
idea before they will pay taxes, build school-houses, or indeed 
send their children to school. The mission of the church is to set 
the leaven of this educational idea to working. 

With more faith than material equipment the churches have, 
since the wreck of the Southern educational system by the war, 
been trying to keep alive educational ideals and offer in a limited 
way the means of higher education. Indeed, with the state insti- 
tutions virtually closed there was a period when they were really 
the only resource for higher education in the South. 

And their period of usefulness is not yet passed. So vitally 
connected as they are with the people and with all that concerns 
popular education, they cannot yet be spared in the struggle to 
build up educational conditions in the South. — H. N. Snyder, 
Woiford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina. 



EDUCATION THE SUPREME NEED OF THE HOUR 
It would be superfluous to speak in this presence of the 
necessity of an educated citizenship. I mean the education not of 
a part but of the whole, not of the children of one class, but of 
every class — an universal education. The student of economic 
and social conditions in the Southern States is bound to conclude 
that it is the supreme question of the hour. In it is involved 
the progress and the industrial independence of our people. Out 
of it will come the solution of the race problem. Through it we 
shall become more tolerant. By its light situations which are now 
dark and difficult of solution will be illumined and made clear. By 
it the existence of the demagogue and the self-seeker, who thrives 
upon untruth and ignorance, will be made more difficult. It has 
been said that ignorant people can be governed, but only educated 
people can govern themselves. 

The remedy for the evils in our body politic lies in the 
creation of a healthful public sentiment. We must tell the people 
that it is unsafe to live in a commimity where the children are 
suffered to grow up in ignorance. We must tell them that while 
it is their duty to pay taxes for the protection of lif^ and property 
and for the maintenance of the police powers of government, that 

95 



it is a stili higher duty to tax themselves for the education of 
their children. We must declare that it is not a charity which 
they are bestowing, but that it is the inalienable right of every 
child to demand and to receive the benefits at least of an ele- 
mentary education, and that mental and moral nurture and manual 
training are more important than all the other demands of youth. 
We must point out to them that the most profitable investment of 
the body politic, measured in dollars and cents, is the tax fund in- 
vested in the brains and capabilities of the children. We must bring 
home to them that recognition of duty and conception of truth are 
not alone essential, but that v/orks must jusify the faith that is 
in them, that taxes must be levied and collected, and that wise and 
intelligent supervision of these public agencies of education must 
be maintained. 

And it is to the young men of the South that this work must 
be entrusted. To them I bring a message full of hope and of 
promise. If they would enjoy the greatest happiness which comes 
to one in this world, that of doing good to their kind and con- 
tributing to the welfare of the State; if they would leave a heri- 
tage to their children of a life spent in the public weal; if they 
would win the highest of all encomiums — the approbation of an 
intelligent conscience and judgment — I bid them enter into this 
contest for the regeneration of the South. As for myself, I have 
thrown down the gauntlet and I expect as a humble private to 
fight in the ranks to the end. — Hon. John H. Small, of North 
Carolina. 

AN EDUCATIONAL TRUST 

In this day of trusts and combines let the work of this Con- 
ference be to improve the opportunity to organize the biggest and 
most comprehensive trust yet attempted — an educational trust, in 
which every child will be a stockholder and every human head 
will be a share of stock. When you do this you will have inaug- 
urated a movement beside which will be insignificant the com- 
bines which have cornered both the land and the ocean, and which 
levy tribute on every morsel of food which enters the mouths of 
the hungry. There will be created in such a combination a store- 
house of energy, backed by riches greater than Golconda's, and 

96 



which can be made to unfold to the eager world the priceless re- 
sources locked in the fertile bosom of the wealthiest undeveloped 
territory of God's green earth — an energy which will harness our 
rivers, start to pulsating as never before the beating arteries of 
our commerce ; create new factories, inspire new enterprises, trans- 
form idleness into industry and touch with the magic wand of 
knowledge the source from which will spring an everfiowing foun- 
tain of peace, contentment and prosperity. 

When you shall have done this you may say of such work 
that by it the Almighty has answered the prayer of that noble and 
chivalrous old Confederate, Wade Hampton — the knightly cheva- 
lier of the old South, the ideal citizen of the new — whose eyes 
were so recently closed in death and whose last invocation, uttered 
as his soul was taking flight to the Great Beyond, was, "God bless 
all my people, white and black alike." 

In so far as this movement disregards the color line, it calls 
for the united support and sympathy of all our people, and it will 
get it. That it already has both is demonstrated in the tribute 
paid to the work in hand by the presence of this typically repre- 
sentative gathering of Northern and Southern men and women, 
standing shoulder to shoulder in the effort to strike off the shackles 
if illiteracy wherever and upon whomsoever found, and to place 
in the hands of black and white alike the torch of universal edu- 
cation. — Hon. Clark Hoivell, of Atlanta, Georgia. 



SOMB LESSONS LEARNED AT THE CONEERENCE 
In listening to the able addresses of the past three days I 
have been impressed with the emiphasis laid on the economic side 
of education. It is perhaps not the highest aim of life to develop 
the resources of the country; but people are learning more and 
more that the economic virtues are at the basis of many others 
and that you can best make people temperate and pure if you 
first make them industrious and thrifty. 

When I began to devote myself to political economy many 
people called it a dismal science. Some of us thought theology 
a dismal study, and in those days each often appeared dismal in 
the eyes of the other. The situation recalls the Western college 
which practiced co-education, and found the students put too 

97 



much emphasis on the co and too little on the education. The 
faculty accordingly adopted the following draconic rule: "No 
young gentleman shall walk home from prayer-meeting with a 
young lady unless they are both going in the same direction," 
We are all going in the same direction now. Theology and phi- 
lanthropy are going hand in hand with political economy, and 
therefore neither is dismal, but all are joyful, courageous and full 
of hope for the future. 

I want simply to add that, as the youngest member of Mr. 
Ogden's infant class, I came here not to instruct but to tell my 
experiences. They have been delightful and I have learned many 
things, but if from this Southern trip I had learned nothing else 
than what a Southern Alemorial Day celebration really is I would 
have learned much. At the celebration this afternoon I heard from 
the orator of the occasion as high a note of patriotism as I have 
ever heard struck by a public speaker. It is easy to be patriotic 
when successful and prosperous. The difficult thing is to be 
patriotic when you are disappointed and misunderstood. And I 
shall go back from this meeting, because of the lesson from this 
Southern Memorial Day, with fresh inspiration, stronger courage 
and a renewed love of our common country. — Professor W. H. 
Parnham, of Yale University. 



ED UCA TION MEANS E VERYTHING 

Dr. Albert Shaw, of New York, remarked that we had come 
to a time in the history of the country when education meant 
everything. "Why," lie asked, "are we present here at Athens, — 
public men, business men, journalists, men of various affairs, as 
well as teachers and those engaged in educational work? Why, a 
few days ago, were many distinguished men assembled on Morn- 
ingside Heights in New York? Incidentally, they were there to 
install a new president of Columbia University. Actually, they 
were there because they recognized the great part that an institu- 
tion like Columbia is playing, and must more than ever play in 
the best life of the Nation. We are here at Athens, I take it, not so 
much to show interest in Southern education, as in the larger 
cause of education anywhere and everywhere throughout the 
country." 

98 



The speaker pointed out in a few sentences the great social 
and industrial transitions through which the country was passing, 
and held that the only safeguard for American institutions lay in 
the training of the individual citizen in character and in intelli- 
gence. So necessary was this task of training that the profession 
of teaching had come to be the most important of all, and in a 
sense other professions were auxiliary to it and were taking on 
an educational method and character. Thus, journalism, properly 
pursued, was helping the teacher to educate the community, the 
pulpit was doing the same, while the profession of medicine was 
training the people in the art of proper living, and the profession 
of law, to some extent at least, to the principles of justice between 
man and man and in the art of self-government. It was our busi- 
ness now to learn how to make the school the center of the life 
of the neighborhood, to adapt its work to conditions as they actu- 
ally exist. The speaker showed how in the North the massing of 
population in the cities had made it necessary to deal with the 
problems of city life, and that the school question had largely re- 
solved itself into the business of providing instruction and training 
for the children of the poor in the great towns. The South, on 
the other hand, being predominantly rural, the school question of 
greatest importance had to do with the improvement of the country 
schools for the sake of the regeneration of life in the farming dis- 
tricts. 

Mr. Shaw, before closing, paused to say a few words about 
the occasion, it being the day set apart for services in memory 
of the Confederate dead. He paid a tribute to the Confederate 
leaders and soldiers, recalling the fact that the only biographical 
speech he had ever made in his life was twenty-five years before 
in a Northwestern college, where he had eulogized the character 
of a distinguished Georgian statesman, Alexander H. Stephens; 
and he spoke further about the great growth of appreciation in the 
North of the heroes of the Southern cause. Referring to certain 
gifts of money for Southern educational work which had been 
announced earlier in the day, Mr. Shaw held that the South by no 
means had its reasonable share of the funds which had been given 
to American colleges and universities out of the surplus wealth to 
which the resources of the whole country had contributed. Further 



99 



LofC. 



than that, he reminded the audience that the South is paying from 
fifty to sixty milHons a year to the national pension fund, compara- 
tively Httle of which is returned to the South, the bulk of it being 
distributed in the Northern States. He held that the South had 
borne this great tax upon its resources with amazing patience and 
avoidance of open complaint. This fact furnished an additional 
reason of the clearest importance why the South should be gener- 
ousl}^ supported in its educational work with whatever resources, 
public or private, were available for the promotion of the cause of 
education in America. 



THE MEN OP THE MOUNTAINS 
In all the broad reach of this land of the free there is no 
fieM so teeming with the possibilities of a clear-sighted, virile, well- 
balanced, glorious Americanism as that to be found in the roman- 
tic Appalachian country. 

What of these men of the mountains? By their fruits ye 
shall know them. Have Americans forgotten how the riflemen 
of Morgan in twenty-one days marched from the mountains 
of Virginia to the environs of Boston and were there shoulder 
to shoulder with the minute-men of Lexington and Bunker Hill 
when Washington, under the elms of Cambridge, wheeled his 
horse and drew his sword to take command of the embattled 
farmers? Have we forgotten when Ferguson and his red-coats 
and Tories were ravaging the fields of the Carolinas how, through 
the gaps of the Blue Ridge, came the mountain men, like the 
fierce commandoes of Dewet and Botha, each riding his own 
horse and armed with his own rifle, and how at King's Moun- 
tain, assailing the cruel foemen on every side, they swept the 
wooded summits with their searching and devastating fire, press- 
ing ever onward and upward until the royal standard fell and 
the Carolinas were free? Shall Americans, whether from the 
North or from the South, ever cease to remember that from 
this same mountain strain came that giant in mind and body, but 
child in heart — the martyred Lincoln? Thence also, uncertain 
whether born in North or in South Carolina, but claiming the 
latter as his birthplace when he proclaimed to its haughty chiv- 
alry, "The Union, by the Eternal, it shall be preserved !" came Old 

lOO 



Hickory — the hero of Horseshoe Bend and New Orleans. Not 
gentler than he was Launcelot to woman or child, but never man 
yet fiercer to his foe. Thence also came Sam Houston, wayward, 
many-wived, but with heart of gold and patriot to the core, whose 
resistless valor on the bloody sward of San Jacinto added to the 
flag of the freedman's home and hope the orb planetary which 
glistens for the Lone Star State. 

Such are the types of that intrepid and vigorous stock which 
multiply amid the rugged grandeur of these Southern mountains. 
And still the husbandman of the mind does not bind up his 
sheaves there nor yet the gleaner fill his bosom. Oh, what a har- 
vest to be planted and ripened! 

On San Jacinto the captured Santa Anna inquired of Hous- 
ton how it was that with a force so small the American could win 
so complete a victory. Drawing from his pocket an ear of corn 
the President of the Republic of Texas exclaimed, "When patriots 
fight on such rations as this they are unconquerable." And after- 
wards the veterans of Houston begged of him the grains of 
that famous ear, and to this good hour, from the rich bottoms 
and broad prairies of Texas, millions of bushels of golden grain 
are gathered from the seed then sown. 

Sir, may the labors of this unselfish and ennobling body, 
under the providence of God, fructify and bear fruit like the corn 
of San Jacinto. — Judge Emory Speer, of Georgia. 



IMPRESSIONS OF THE CONFBRBNCB 
I shall take away from here some very distinct impressions. 
It has been said that in fighting this battle for education we are 
fighting the battle of liberty for the children, and it flashed across 
my mind at that time that those words might, perhaps, admit of 
an even broader interpretation, there came to my mind, naturally, 
the words of our Declaration of Independence, "The right to life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and it seems to me that this 
is a fight for all of those inalienable rights. It is a fight for life 
itself, for what is life when it is death in life ? 

I shall also take away with me an impression of the hopeful- 
ness of this movement. I felt somewhat gloomy as I listened to 
some of the comparisons with reference to illiteracy, but then it 

lOI 



occurred to me that this illiteracy might be compared to the stag- 
nant pool, breeding malaria and disease ; but the pool, when 
drained and allowed to flow down the hillside, is purified by God's 
sunshine, and becomes a source of joy in the valleys below. So 
these children if left illiterate may stagnate and become dangerous 
and malignant to the country's health, but if they are brought 
within the influence of God's sunshine of education they may 
become a rich source of strength and usefulness in the nation's 
life. 

Then there is another impression that I have received and it 
is this : I think that to many of us the chief value of this 
most stimulating of Conferences has been the contagious influence 
of personal enthusiasm, the impress of the personality of the lead- 
ers in this work, the evident earnestness and tremendous moral 
force that is behind this movement. We have splendid generals 
and splendid colonels, what we must have now is splendid pri- 
vates. I remember to have read a story of how in olden times, in 
Scotland when danger threatened the clans, a messenger was sent 
out to give the alarm with a torch of fire that he carried from 
hill to hill to arouse the people. That torch has been kindled here. 
It must be taken up and carried into Tennessee and Alabama and 
Florida, to every point of the compass. Willing volunteers must 
come and do this work. It seems to me that there is nothing so 
inspiring to the young manhood and womanhood of our South as 
the opportunity to take up this work which I think we all know 
is the most important work that has been undertaken for many, 
many years, and that promises the greatest good to this dear coun- 
try that we so love. 

Many should come forward to stand as volunteers under this 
banner on which are written the words : "Our country and its 
children" — a banner under which all of our great leaders could 
have enlisted, a banner under which could have stood Robert E. 
Lee, who crowned the last years of his life by his devotion to the 
education of the young men of this country, a banner under which 
could have stood Abraham Lincoln, who loved the people and all 
the people, but who, perhaps, held in most tender affection that 
class for whom we are working, the plain people. — Edward T. 
Sanford, of Tennessee. 

1 02 



